Literary notes about margin (AI summary)
The term margin in literature serves as a versatile marker that can denote both physical borders and metaphorical limits. It is frequently used to describe literal boundaries, such as the edge of a brook ([1]), the periphery of a thicket ([2]), or even the bank of a pond ([3]), thereby enriching the depiction of landscapes and settings. At the same time, margin appears as a space for annotation and correction on a page—as seen when page and line numbers are noted ([4]) or when scribbled comments and corrections are made in the margin ([5], [6]). Moreover, it functions metaphorically to signal the edge of time or possibility, as when a narrow margin of delay is all that separates success from failure ([7], [8]) or when it suggests the room available for unforeseen variations ([9]). Thus, literature uses margin to highlight that delicate border between the central focus and its outer limits, both in material form and in abstract concepts.
- In the dark shadow of the grove, on the margin of the brook, he beheld something huge, misshapen and towering.
— from The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving - We were now at the margin of the thicket.
— from Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson - The route taken by Duncan and David lay directly across the clearing of the beavers, and along the margin of their pond.
— from The Last of the Mohicans; A narrative of 1757 by James Fenimore Cooper - Page and line numbers in the left margin refer to Bell; numbers in the right margin are from McKay.
— from The Metamorphoses of Ovid, Books I-VII by Ovid - Idle curiosity made me follow him in his work, and I noticed him correcting the word ‘ancora’, putting in an ‘h’ in the margin.
— from The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, 1725-1798. Complete by Giacomo Casanova - He had a pencil with which he scratched out some words and letters, writing the corrections in the margin.
— from The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, 1725-1798. Complete by Giacomo Casanova - “I have given a margin of half an hour,” said he.
— from The Return of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle - Jackson, warned of his danger, had already made for the bridge, and crossing at a gallop escaped capture by the barest margin of time.
— from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll - There is therefore everywhere a margin for the accidental, and just as much in the greatest things as in the smallest.
— from On War by Carl von Clausewitz