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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.
  1. 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
  2. We were now at the margin of the thicket.
    — from Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
  3. 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
  4. 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
  5. 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
  6. 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
  7. “I have given a margin of half an hour,” said he.
    — from The Return of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle
  8. 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
  9. 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

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