Literary notes about scope (AI summary)
Writers deploy the term “scope” to denote the range or extent of ideas, narrative ambition, or inquiry. It can highlight the breadth of a subject or the variability allowed by something’s inherent nature, as when a strategist describes how natural features offer “scope for a certain variability of plan” ([1]). It equally serves to mark the limits or freedom of a discussion, whether indicating how a scientific discourse is “unparallel'd” in breadth ([2]) or determining the parameters within which philosophical knowledge is examined ([3]). In poetic and narrative contexts, “scope” often suggests the extent to which creativity or influence can reach, evoking both the potential for boundless expression and the constraints imposed by structure, as when a critic laments that prior works did not realize the full “scope of English verse” ([4]).
- Chang Yu says: "Every kind of ground is characterized by certain natural features, and also gives scope for a certain variability of plan.
— from The Art of War by active 6th century B.C. Sunzi - Including the literature of science, its scope is indeed unparallel'd.
— from Complete Prose Works by Walt Whitman - We will, in the next chapter, consider briefly what may be said to account for such knowledge, and what is its scope and its degree of certainty.
— from The Problems of Philosophy by Bertrand Russell - Indeed, as Stedman says, "before his advent we did not realize the full scope of English verse."
— from English Literature by William J. Long
