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Literary notes about tableau (AI summary)

In literature, the term "tableau" is employed to evoke a vivid, frozen scene, often reminiscent of a detailed painting or a living picture. Writers use it to capture moments of intense emotion or dramatic pause, such as when a character’s face becomes a silent canvas of agony ([1]) or when an entire crowd is arranged in a striking, almost choreographed display ([2]). At times, it is used to delineate intricate stage settings that heighten the narrative’s visual impact, creating moments that are as much about the arrangement and atmosphere as about the unfolding action ([3], [4]). Moreover, "tableau" also transcends the stage to describe systematic representations found in intellectual or artistic works, thereby linking the aesthetic with the analytical ([5]).
  1. Alec looked at him dumbly—his face a tableau of anguish.
    — from This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald
  2. The men and the women remained transfixed in their places, as if they were acting a tableau.
    — from The Created Legend by Fyodor Sologub
  3. A curtain of white gauze, [Pg 193] drawn across the front of the stage, will give a good effect to the tableau.
    — from Home Pastimes; or Tableaux Vivants by James H. Head
  4. The curtain opens in the centre Tableau.
    — from Cyrano de Bergerac by Edmond Rostand
  5. All known things will thus be arranged in a sort of tableau or systematic classification embracing the whole of nature.
    — from The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life by Émile Durkheim

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