Literary notes about relevance (AI summary)
In literature, "relevance" is deployed to underscore the connection between ideas, actions, or artifacts and their broader significance. Authors invoke the term to point to the enduring value of abstract ideals as well as to signal the immediate impact of events or observations. For instance, it can serve to illustrate an ideal's fading applicability in modern life [1] or to emphasize a character’s self-identification that brings weight to their narrative [2]. It also emerges in analytical or judicial contexts where the pertinence of facts is critical to the outcome [3], [4]. In this way, "relevance" functions not simply as a descriptor of importance, but as a dynamic bridge linking thematic concerns with the context of human experience, underscoring connections between the past, present, and future [5], [6].
- But its expression may have been only momentary, and that eternal ideal may have no further relevance to the living world.
— from The Life of Reason: The Phases of Human Progress by George Santayana - “My name is Sheldon, David Sheldon,” he said, with direct relevance, holding out a thin hand.
— from Adventure by Jack London - The chief executive insisted that his instructions were that all documents of relevance were to be retained on the single file" (emphasis added).
— from Judgments of the Court of Appeal of New Zealand on Proceedings to Review Aspects of the Report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Mount Erebus Aircraft DisasterC.A. 95/81 by New Zealand. Court of Appeal - “I must ask counsel to put questions which have some relevance even to his own line of defence,” remarked the judge sternly.
— from You Never Know Your Luck; being the story of a matrimonial deserter. Complete by Gilbert Parker - As the subject-matter recedes the mental datum ceases to have much similarity or inward relevance to what is its cause or its meaning.
— from The Life of Reason: The Phases of Human Progress by George Santayana - Even truth itself, the golden element of trust and progress, has to be limited by relevance, timeliness and utility.
— from Bygones Worth Remembering, Vol. 2 (of 2) by George Jacob Holyoake
