Literary notes about broadcast (AI summary)
The word "broadcast" in literature has been used to evoke a sense of wide, almost indiscriminate dispersal, whether of ideas, images, or even physical objects. In some works, it metaphorically captures events scatted across time and space—William James speaks of phenomena "lying broadcast over the surface of history" [1], while Victor Hugo describes death as "scattered broadcast" [2]. Other authors extend this imagery to modern communication, as seen in the depiction of stories delivered via technology [3] or the portrayal of drama that reaches every corner of daily life [4]. Additionally, the term is intertwined with agricultural metaphors of sowing and scattering seeds, highlighting both fruitful and random distribution [5, 6]. Even in descriptions of disorder—like crockery strewn about [7]—"broadcast" underscores an expansive, sweeping reach that shapes the narrative’s tone.
- All the while, however, the phenomena are there, lying broadcast over the surface of history.
— from The Will to Believe, and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy by William James - A shower of bullets is also a crowd; it is death scattered broadcast.
— from The History of a Crime by Victor Hugo - The stories are "packaged" and immediately feed to customers' personal computers and workstations by FM, satellite, or X.25 broadcast: *
— from The Online World by Odd De Presno - On Henry's Other Mistress , "the broadcast drama about you and your neighbors, folksy people, ordinary people, real people"!
— from The Marching Morons by C. M. Kornbluth - No more sowers flinging their seed about broadcast, so that some falls by the wayside and some among thorns, and all that.
— from The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy - sown broadcast ; yes, the word is "sown.
— from Poems by Victor Hugo - Crockery was strewn broadcast in fragments.
— from Maggie: A Girl of the Streets by Stephen Crane