Literary notes about legend (AI summary)
Literary works employ the term "legend" to capture a narrative that transcends strict historical accuracy, often weaving fact and myth into a tapestry of cultural memory and symbolic meaning. It is used to denote accounts that may evolve over time—transforming historical figures into larger-than-life icons or distilling societal values into iconic stories [1, 2, 3]. Sometimes the term underscores a pervasive tradition that reveals not only a mythic past, but also acts as a unifying force in community identity, as when family lore or regional narratives are invoked to reminisce shared heritage [4, 5]. In other contexts, "legend" marks the boundary between the actual and the mythical, as exemplified by descriptions of uncanny events or haunted locales that seem to exist solely on the threshold of reality [6, 7]. Overall, the word functions both as a repository of tradition and a tool for exploring deeper, symbolic truths in literature [8, 9].
- It was arranged according to nations; it began with Ninus, the Nimrod of legend, and was brought down to about 9 A.D. 3. Style.
— from Helps to Latin Translation at Sight by Edmund Luce - “Yes, it is a statement of a certain legend which runs in the Baskerville family.”
— from The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle - [2] This life of Æsop, composed by a monk of the fourteenth century, is a legend which has replaced history by disfiguring it.
— from The Fables of La Fontaine by Jean de La Fontaine - There is no more beautiful legend in existence.”
— from Les Misérables by Victor Hugo - He carried on the tradition of his Napoleon, the great Blackwhite, whose memory he evoked at times by legend and mimicry.
— from Dubliners by James Joyce - An old English legend relates that a great man’s cellar was haunted by devils who drank up his wine.
— from Demonology and Devil-lore by Moncure Daniel Conway - Ammianus, calmly pursuing his narrative, overthrows the legend by a single sentence.
— from The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon - The incidents of the legend become the hero's surest passport to immortality.
— from The Moon and Sixpence by W. Somerset Maugham - The legend of Prometheus was their unconsciously-given ‘notice to quit,’ though it waited many centuries for its great interpreter.
— from Demonology and Devil-lore by Moncure Daniel Conway
