Literary notes about bleating (AI summary)
The word "bleating" in literature is employed both as a literal description of animal sounds and a metaphor for human outcry or complaint. In pastoral settings, it vividly evokes the sounds of rural life—sheep or goats expressing distress or softness, as heard in texts describing the lowing of cattle and the gentle bleating of flocks ([1], [2]). At times, authors extend the term to mirror human behavior, imbuing a character’s voice with qualities of plaintiveness or ridicule, as when a character is said to be "bleating" like a sheep ([3], [4]). This dual usage enriches the narrative by blending the natural with the emotional, reinforcing scenes of both bucolic calm and poignant vulnerability ([5], [6]).
- The lowing heifer and the bleating ewe, in herds and flocks, may ramble safe and unregarded through the pastures.
— from History of Tom Jones, a Foundling by Henry Fielding - The air is filled with the bleating of calves and sheep, and the hustling of oxen, as if a pastoral valley were going by.
— from Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau - Why, that bloody bleating goat Temple has ideas.
— from A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce - An’t that as nat’ral as a sheep’s bleating, or a pig’s grunting, or a horse’s neighing, or a bird’s singing?
— from The Old Curiosity Shop by Charles Dickens - He could hear the tattered man bleating plaintively.
— from The Red Badge of Courage: An Episode of the American Civil War by Stephen Crane - While still at sea in my ship I could bear the cattle lowing as they came home to the yards, and the sheep bleating.
— from The Odyssey by Homer
