Infinity in literature
Infinity in literature began with Chaucer in 1374, and then vastly expanded with Shakespeare's use of the concept of infinity in several of his prominent plays.
Subsequent to Shakespeare, the English Romanticist poet William Blake said this:
| “ | If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, infinite.[1] | ” |
American authors have likewise used infinite or infinity, such as F. Scott Fitzgerald (see below), Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Herman Melville in Moby Dick:
| “ | But as in landlessness alone resides the highest truth, shoreless, indefinite as God - so better is it to perish in that howling infinite, than be ingloriously dashed upon the lee, even if that were safety! For worm-like, then, oh! who would craven crawl to land![2] | ” |
Victor Hugo explained in Les Miserables:
| “ | Genius is a promontory jutting out into the infinite.[1] | ” |
The poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow made only an occasional use of infinity, as in The Masque of Pandora, IV. The Air, Masque of Pandora (1875)
HERMES (returning to Olympus.):
| “ | O joy of motion! O delight to cleave
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” |
The Great Gatsby
F. Scott Fitzgerald used the concept of infinity effectively in The Great Gatsby:
| “ | Reserving judgements is a matter of infinite hope. | ” |
| “ | The transactions in Montana copper that made [Cody] many times a millionaire found him physically robust but on the verge of soft-mindedness, and, suspecting this, an infinite number of women tried to separate him from his money. | ” |
In addition, this class novel contains three references to "innumerable".