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Les Misérables vocabulary
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Caryatid
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tags: [architecture] [mythology]
► definition
Definition:Originally one of the seven maiden columns supporting the structure in a corner of the Athenean temple Erechtheum. Now the name is applied to any similar female sculpture serving the same purpose as the feature has been revived in modern architecture.
photo: by Thermos under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Generic license.
► uses
Uses:
And so, in a kind of symmetry with the two exiled duchesses whom, in years past, when the Saint-Euverte salon was only starting, one used to see holding up, like a pair of Caryatides, its unstable crest, in these later years one could distinguish, mingling with the fashionable throng, only two heterogeneous persons,
Marcel Proust. In Search of Lost Time [volume 4]
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Once, when they were repairing the balcony of the town-hall at Toulon, one of those admirable caryatids of Puget, which support the balcony, became loosened, and was on the point of falling. Jean Valjean, who was present, supported the caryatid with his shoulder, and gave the workmen time to arrive.
Victor Hugo. Les Misérables
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like a Caryatid, he patient sits, upholding on his frozen brow the piled entablatures of ages.
Herman Melville. Moby Dick (1851)
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