Literary notes about exotic (AI summary)
In literature, "exotic" serves as a multifaceted descriptor, evoking mystery, allure, and a sense of the foreign or out of place. It is often used to signal a departure from the ordinary—suggesting hidden or ancient truths that stir the imagination [1], or casting cultural and spiritual practices in an enigmatic light that enchants readers [2]. At times, it highlights natural elements by emphasizing their rarity or unusual origin, as when botanical specimens are depicted as both alluring and implacably other [3]. The adjective can also extend to characterizations of people or emotions, imbuing them with an ambiguous quality of beauty and estrangement, evident when a character is irresistibly drawn to something out of the ordinary [4] or when even love itself is portrayed as a fragile, slowly unfolding, exotic bloom [5].
- Perhaps, even, you may place me, faults and all, in some special heart-niche reserved for defunct yet exotic truths."
— from Love's Usuries by Louis Creswicke - [29] These religions added to their exotic charm that spell which great age casts over men’s imaginations.
— from Pagan Ideas of Immortality During the Early Roman Empire by Clifford Herschel Moore - Many exotic plants have pollen utterly worthless, in the same condition as in the most sterile hybrids.
— from The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection by Charles Darwin - Yet the exotic had grown here, suddenly as the prophet's gourd; and had drawn hither Tess.
— from Tess of the d'Urbervilles: A Pure Woman by Thomas Hardy - Love, like confidence, is a plant of slow growth, and of most exotic fragility.
— from The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, No. 59, September, 1862 A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics by Various
