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Literary notes about anathema (AI summary)

The term “anathema” has been wielded with remarkable versatility in literature, serving as a potent curse, a marker of moral and social repudiation, and even a playful outburst. In some works, it is invoked with the fierce intensity of a denunciation—as seen in the incantatory curse against divorce in [1] and the resolute moral stand described in [2]. Authors like Hardy and Scott employ it to underscore bitter condemnation or tragic fate, as in [3] and [4], while Hawthorne and Chekhov illustrate its use to evoke an almost tangible aura of doom or disapproval in personal interactions ([5], [6], [7]). The word also makes curious appearances in unexpected contexts, such as its playful integration in sentences about coffee in [8] or its metaphorical application in political and social commentary in [9] and [10]. In these varied instances, “anathema” emerges not merely as an archaic sermonic term but as a multifaceted symbol—a malediction that both binds and rejects, reverberating with cultural, moral, and sometimes even humorous connotations.
  1. Let divorce be anathema; curse it; curse this accursed thing, divorce; curse it, curse it!
    — from History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I
  2. He chose rather to incur their anathema than to wound his conscience, and departed from the city.
    — from Fox's Book of Martyrs by John Foxe
  3. "He that is accursed, let him be accursed still," was the pitiless anathema written in this spoliated effort of his new-born solicitousness.
    — from Far from the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy
  4. The Cross thus formed he held on high, With wasted hand and haggard eye, And strange and mingled feelings woke, While his anathema he spoke:— IX.
    — from The Lady of the Lake by Walter Scott
  5. He shrank from the venerable saint as if to avoid an anathema.
    — from Mosses from an old manse by Nathaniel Hawthorne
  6. Hold him, hold him, or else he’ll get away, the anathema!
    — from Project Gutenberg Compilation of Short Stories by Chekhov by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov
  7. “You anathema, plague take you!”
    — from Project Gutenberg Compilation of Short Stories by Chekhov by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov
  8. It appears that boiled coffee (the name is anathema today) was invented about the year 1000 A.D.
    — from All About Coffee by William H. Ukers
  9. And some poor Conservatives who are against conscription must vote for Laurier, who always has been anathema to them.
    — from Rilla of Ingleside by L. M. Montgomery
  10. To do anything THEY have never done is anathema maranatha.
    — from Anne of the Island by L. M. Montgomery

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