Strangeness · Lexicon

From the book

Centuries of Meditations

Thomas Traherne · Diotimos Editions · 2026

Orientation

At a Glance

The wordStrange can mean unfamiliar, remarkable, or foreign.
In TraherneThe child enters the world as a little stranger surrounded by delights.
In this editionStrangeness is this lexicon’s organizing noun; the passages use strange and stranger.
A place to beginThe infant is a little stranger among newly perceived delights.

Meaning

Strange can mean unfamiliar, remarkable, or foreign. A stranger may lack habitual assumptions and therefore see vividly, but may also be vulnerable to isolation and mistaken authority.

Use in the book

The child enters the world as a little stranger surrounded by delights. Unfamiliarity allows the ordinary to appear rare and glorious before social valuation dulls it. The adult is asked to recover a comparable estrangement from corrupt customs, becoming a stranger to the opinions that make divine gifts seem negligible.

Traherne also gives the word an ethical direction. In the charitable household, an arriving stranger is welcomed as joyfully as the sun. The unfamiliar person is not excluded from the shared inheritance; charity makes kinship visible where ordinary acquaintance is absent. Strangeness therefore moves between perception and hospitality: it can release objects from habit and release neighbours from the limits of private familiarity.

Places to read

III.2The infant is a little stranger among newly perceived delights.
III.5Renewal requires becoming strangers to corrupt customary opinions.
III.7The child’s unfamiliarity helps explain submission to adult authority.
IV.22The stranger is welcomed within a household governed by universal charity.

In this edition

Strangeness is this lexicon’s organizing noun; the passages use strange and stranger. Foreignness, novelty, and spiritual detachment should not be assumed to mean the same thing in each occurrence.

Source note

Primary text: III.2, III.5, III.7, IV.22. No 2026 editorial notes used.