Literary notes about fanciful (AI summary)
The term “fanciful” is frequently invoked to evoke a sense of imaginative creativity or whimsical exaggeration in literary narratives. Authors use it to characterize both the inventive endeavors of characters—as when an inventor pursues his fanciful projects ([1]) or when unconventional theories are boldly described as fanciful inventions ([2], [3])—and the evocative stylistic choices in storytelling. It lends an air of playful unorthodoxy to descriptions, be it in recounting reveries and speculative musings ([4], [5]), enhancing physical ornamentation ([6], [7]), or even in the crafting of names that hint at deeper, almost mythic associations ([8]). Moreover, “fanciful” sometimes carries a critical note when it is employed to question ideas or actions that stray too far from practicality ([9], [10]), underlining its versatile role in the nuanced articulation of both creative brilliance and imaginative excess.
- Cyrus Harding listened to the enthusiastic Pencroft developing his fanciful projects.
— from The Mysterious Island by Jules Verne - Even the "atom" is one of these fanciful inventions like the "thing" and the "primitive subject."...
— from The Will to Power: An Attempted Transvaluation of All Values. Book III and IV by Nietzsche - According to my new, and perhaps fanciful, theory, this liquid mass must be gradually lost in the deep bowels of the earth.
— from A Journey to the Centre of the Earth by Jules Verne - Imagine—that is if you have a fanciful turn—imagine, I say, my wonder—my consternation—my despair!
— from The Works of Edgar Allan Poe, The Raven Edition by Edgar Allan Poe - “No doubt you will think me fanciful—but I had already established a kind of connexion.
— from The Works of Edgar Allan Poe — Volume 1 by Edgar Allan Poe - Her legs and feet are bare, and so are her arms, except for her fanciful bunches of loose silver rings on her ankles and on her arms.
— from Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World by Mark Twain - The floors were laid in fanciful figures wrought in mosaics of many-colored marbles.
— from The Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain - The name of a woman should be agreeable, sweet, fanciful; it should end in long vowels, and resemble words of benediction.’
— from Notre-Dame de Paris by Victor Hugo - You have made inquires into the history of my unhappy brother, and you now pretend to deduce this knowledge in some fanciful way.
— from The Sign of the Four by Arthur Conan Doyle - He renounces his fanciful theory of communism, but still desires to place women as far as possible on an equality with men.
— from Laws by Plato
