Literary notes about sprite (AI summary)
In literature, “sprite” is a multifaceted term that often evokes both ethereal enchantment and capricious mischief. It is sometimes employed to describe a being that straddles the human and the supernatural, such as a figure seen as half angel, half sprite [1]. At other times, the word designates a tiny, elusive creature—whether a helpful woodland spirit or a playful, trickster-like attendant that flits about unnoticed [2, 3]. In certain works, however, “sprite” takes on a darker hue, characterizing an impish presence whose unpredictable and sometimes malevolent nature challenges the balance between light and shadow in human affairs [4, 5, 6, 7].
- Walking with her one day, her sister Annie, always half angel, half sprite, pointed to an object in the road.
— from Julia Ward Howe, 1819-1910 by Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards - In the second part, several sentences are repeated to make the wood-sprite feel that he has been chased away.
— from Argonauts of the Western Pacific by Bronislaw Malinowski - “My quaint Ariel,” said Prospero to the little sprite when he made him free, “I shall miss you; yet you shall have your freedom.”
— from Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 by Charles Herbert Sylvester - Really that little man was dreadful: a mere sprite of caprice and, ubiquity: one never knew either his whim or his whereabout.
— from Villette by Charlotte Brontë - Once upon a time there was a wicked sprite, indeed he was the most mischievous of all sprites.
— from Andersen's Fairy Tales by H. C. Andersen - The blood was too hot, and so poisonous the alien sprite who died in that conflict.
— from The Story of Beowulf, Translated from Anglo-Saxon into Modern English Prose - They were a species of tutelary sprite, or Banshee; although winged and feathered differently from most other guardian angels.
— from The House of the Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne
