Literary notes about notes (AI summary)
The word "notes" appears in literature with a remarkably versatile range of meanings, serving as annotations, musical sounds, personal reminders, or even financial instruments. In historical and critical works, “notes” often function as scholarly asides or explanatory commentary to illuminate or support the main text—as seen in texts like [1], [2], and [3]. Meanwhile, in novels and narratives, they can denote tangible items such as banknotes ([4], [5], [6], [7]) or serve as indicators of personal records and observations ([8], [9], [10]). Moreover, in poetic or musical contexts, “notes” evoke auditory imagery or the delicate interplay of sound, as demonstrated in examples like [11], [12], and [13]. This multifaceted usage underscores the word's capacity to operate on both literal and metaphorical levels within diverse literary genres.
- It is to be observed, however, that in the copious notes which are appended to the masque no contemporary trials are referred to.
— from The Devil is an Ass by Ben Jonson - p. 168, 169,) with the notes of Ducange.
— from The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon - Notes, p. 76—82.)]
— from The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon - “Two one pound notes, or friends?” “Two one pound notes.
— from Great Expectations by Charles Dickens - I can make five codicils if I like, and I shall keep my bank-notes for a nest-egg.
— from Middlemarch by George Eliot - Jean Valjean himself opened the package; it was a bundle of bank-notes.
— from Les Misérables by Victor Hugo - She had two hundred-rouble notes in her hand.
— from The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky - She read and took notes incessantly, mastering facts with painful laboriousness, but never flinching from her self-imposed task.
— from The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy - I handed him the notes, and he settled back, pushing his fatigue cap up to his forehead, with a boyish gesture, which I remembered so well in school.
— from The King in Yellow by Robert W. Chambers - I made shorthand notes of all that she said, however, so that there should be no possibility of a mistake.”
— from A Study in Scarlet by Arthur Conan Doyle - And hearing those notes my hair stood on end.
— from The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 - 202 music of the spheres it was an old belief that the stars and planets uttered musical notes as they moved along their courses.
— from The Rape of the Lock, and Other Poems by Alexander Pope - The soft notes of the balalaika at twilight came to him, and the dim shapes of dancing peasants, whirling like aspen-leaves in a fresh breeze.
— from The Best Short Stories of 1917, and the Yearbook of the American Short Story
