Literary notes about lucubration (AI summary)
Lucubration is often employed to evoke the notion of laboriously crafted writing—be it a scholarly treatise, a detailed report, or even a whimsical outpouring of thought. Writers use the term to cast their work as the product of intense, sometimes secretive effort, frequently forged in the midnight hours ([1], [2], [3]). At other times, it is deployed with a note of irony or criticism, suggesting that the work in question is overly pompous or needlessly elaborate ([4], [5], [6]). Whether underscoring a serious, academical style ([7], [8], [9]) or hinting at a more imaginative, self-indulgent composition ([10], [11], [12]), lucubration carries a dual connotation of diligent effort and, at times, excessive verbosity.
- 45 It was the well-earned harvest of many a learned conference, of many a patient lecture, and many a midnight lucubration.
— from The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon - It was the well-earned harvest of many a learned conference, of many a patient lecture, and many a midnight lucubration.
— from The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon - This estimable Mentor had read my midnight lucubration with a sad heart.
— from The Blight of Respectability An Anatomy of the Disease and a Theory of Curative Treatment by Geoffrey Mortimer - It was a letter from my mother in answer to the wild, inflated, triumphant lucubration I had sent her on the eve of my wedding-day.
— from The Pride of Jennico: Being a Memoir of Captain Basil Jennico by Egerton Castle - Some may see our lucubration as we saw it; and others may see nothing but a drunken dream, or the nightmare of a distempered imagination.
— from The Note-Books of Samuel Butler by Samuel Butler - It is (I cannot say the waightyest, but truly) the saddest lucubration and nights passage that ever I had.
— from Letters to Severall Persons of Honour by John Donne - Hence my taste for reports and memoirs, and those ideas of academical style of which traces will be found in many passages of this lucubration.)
— from The Nabob by Alphonse Daudet - Hence my taste for reports and memoirs, and those notions of academic style of which traces will be found in many passages of this lucubration.)
— from The Nabob, Vol. 1 (of 2) by Alphonse Daudet - Father Bougeant calls his lucubration “a new system of philosophy”; but this is not strictly true.
— from The Criminal Prosecution and Capital Punishment of Animals by E. P. (Edward Payson) Evans - "Well, you know a dash necessitates lucubration.
— from The Way of the Gods by John Luther Long - “Yes—that it was original—a lucubration of your own.”
— from As It Was Written: A Jewish Musician's Story by Henry Harland - I am only glad to see that Henry is himself ashamed of his lucubration.
— from Young Blood by E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
