Citations:di ex machina

English

• 1849, Lacy’s Acting Edition of Plays, Dramas, Farces and Extravagances, Etc., Etc: As Performed at the Various Theatres…, volume 79, page 13:

  […] in the city, the bank will give us assistance, then in we come, the Di ex machina, if I may use a pagan illustration, we have the capital, the market is ours, and in a few months time we receive a thousand per cent. for our money — it’s clear.

• 1913, E.H. Pearce, M.A., Sion College and Library, page 102 (Cambridge University Press) (also reprinted in 2008)

  Then appeared three di ex machina in the persons of John Denne, D.D., vicar of St Leonard, Shoreditch, rector of Lambeth, and Archdeacon and Canon of Rochester; Robert Drew, rector of St Margaret Pattens, and Prebendary of St Paul’s; and Reuben Clarke, D.D., rector of St Magnus the Martyr, Archdeacon of Essex, and chaplain in ordinary to George II.

• 1938?: Ernst Krenn, Rozelle Parker Johnson, Revilo Pendleton Oliver, Śūdraka, and the University of Illinois (Urbana–Champaign campus), Mrcchakatikā: The Little Clay Cart; a Drama in Ten Acts (University of Illinois Press), page 10; later quoted in:
• 1984: Nishikānta Chaṭṭopādhyāya and Satya Ranjan Banerjee, Dr. Nishikānta Chaṭṭopādhyāya’s Mṛcchakaṭika, Or, The Toy-cart of King Śūdraka: A Study, page 89:

  (i) Four of the six plays are frankly based on preternatural forces. The whole plot of the Sakuntalā results from the miraculous efficacy of an imprecation uttered by a saintly, though irascible, ascetic; the dénouement is brought about by a deus, or rather by di, ex machina.

• 1975: Christopher Traugott Hermann Rudolph Ehrhardt, Studies in the Reigns of Demetrius II and Antigonus Doson : Text (State University of New York at Buffalo), page 233:

  It was in these circumstances that the Romans appeared, practically as di ex machina, with a fleet of two hundred ships, in contrast to the Achaeans’ ten, […]

• 1994: John R. Porter, Studies in Euripides’ Orestes, pages 281^{1}, 282^{2}, 284^{3}, and 288^{4} (BRILL; →ISBN, →ISBN)

  ^{1} Against this interpretation is the sheer number of di ex machina in the corpus of Greek tragedy, not in Euripides¹¹⁶ alone but in Sophocles¹¹⁷ as well.

  ^{2} Yet both of these alleged oddities are characteristic of the poet’s di ex machina, particularly in his later plays.

  ^{3} It is true that the majority of di ex machina in Euripides are called on to perform much more modest services than is Apollo in Orestes.

  ^{4} But Apollo’s sudden epiphany is not so atypical as to justify the various interpretations placed on it: like other Euripidean di ex machina, the god of Delphi here arrives for the purpose of resolving any remaining issues or uncertainties before the conclusion of the play and not of providing a final insight about the work’s true meaning.¹⁵⁰

• 2000, Peregrine Horden and Nicholas Purcell, The Corrupting Sea: A Study of Mediterranean History (Blackwell Publishing]; →ISBN), page 367:

  In particular, it revolves around revolutions and catastrophes – the historiographical di ex machina which the theory of intensification and abatement does so much to render redundant.

• 2003 May 19, Hortense J. Spillers, Black, White, and in Color: Essays on American Literature and Culture (University of Chicago Press; →ISBN, →ISBN), page 413:

  It appears that we pass here rather too quickly — dropping the ball is more like it — from a social dysfunction to a coerced repair in the formidable evocation of overwhelming devices, the great di ex machina that silence all before them — the Law, the Origin, the Tradition.

• 2003 May 31, Jared Lobdell (editor), The Detective Fiction Reviews of Charles Williams, 1930–1935 (McFarland & Co.; →ISBN, 9780786414543), page 2:

  Of the others, I should say here that their various di ex machina include Tarot cards (The Greater Trumps), […]