1910?: George Robert Stow Mead, Some Mystical Adventures, page 11 (1993 republication; Kessinger Publishing; →ISBN, 9781564593597)
Is our salvation to be dependent upon machines; are we to become dei ex machinis ?
1930: many contributors, The Quarterly Review, page 167 (John Murray)
‘ Power has pushed back the fence-rows of American life,’ the poets of these dei ex machinis will sing to you.
1939: The Australian Law Journal, page 474 (Law Book Co. of Australia)
[…] though brusque counsel, gradually aged and took refuge in drawing complicated wills, while the young articled clerks became the dei ex machinis.
1947: Charles Williams Jones, Saints’ Lives and Chronicles in Early England: Together with First English Translations of The Oldest Life of Pope St. Gregory the Great by a Monk of Whitby, and The Life of St. Guthlac of Crowland by Felix, page 92 (Cornell University Press)
Athena and the various dei ex machinis, however extrinsic to the story, fit their stage. But many characteristic romances since Bede are different.
1952: Mediaeval Academy of America, Speculum, page 372 (Mediaeval Academy of America)
A brief and elementary comparison of the two poems from the point of view of the authors, of the three characters in the love triangle, of Pandaro and Pandarus as dei ex machinis comes to a transition with three examples of a ‘figurative cluster’ of Chaucerian images (e.g., v, 543–53).
1954: Meanjin Quarterly, page 211 (University of Melbourne)
The dei ex machinis and the bug-eyed monsters are both products of man’s imagination — extensions and projections of his own desires, fears and hopes about himself, often revealing more about the sorts of things he believes in — or unconsciously wants to believe in — than he himself recognises.
[…] machine or dei ex machinis, as ex takes an ablative. Back to school, Mr Editor. “Dei ex machinae” — (vol 2, № 10 “All you need is love? […]” […]) […]
1967: Hugh MacLennan, Oxyrhynchus: An Economic and Social Study, page 26 (1968 republication; A. M. Hakkert)
[…] as dei ex machinis to censure the malevolence their system had engendered.
1968, Dec.: R. S. Glen, The Two Muses: An Introduction to Fifth-century Athens by Way of the Drama, page 207 (Macmillan)
[…] the Temple of Hera Acraea in Corinth, involving sacrifice to or for the dead children of Medea, is an example of a trait common in Euripides, the use of local custom or ritual to lend reality and relevance and add significance. These allusions are commonly made by the dei ex machinis.
1969: Peter Saccio, The Court Comedies of John Lyly: A Study in Allegorical Dramaturgy, page 214 (Princeton University Press)
The gods solve the final problems of the plot, which is what dei ex machinis are supposed to do.
1969, Dec.: Leonard Monteath Thompson, African Societies in Southern Africa: Historical Studies, page 25 (Praeger)
Early Iron Age communities almost certainly had their origins far outside southern Africa and they cannot profitably be considered as dei ex machinis stepping over an arbitrarily chosen line of latitude or equally arbitrary modern political boundary.
1974: Robert Anderson Hall, The Comic Style of P. G. Wodehouse, page 31 (Archon Books; →ISBN, 9780208014092)
In sharp contrast to the bunglers Bertie, Ukridge, and Lord Emsworth stand the three dei ex machinis Jeeves, Galahad Threepwood, and Lord Ickenham.
1975: Stephen Ignatius Hemenway, The Novel of India : The Anglo-Indian novel, page 43 (Writers’ Workshop)
For Taylor, in Confessions of a Thug, the unobtrusive arrival of the “Ungrez Feringheez” (English Europeans) as dei-ex-machinis is the triumph of British righteousness and power in the face of the bloody deeds of Ameer Ali and his Thugs.
1976: Gilbert B. Cross, Next Week — East Lynne: Domestic Drama in Performance, 1820–1874, page 225 (Bucknell University Press; →ISBN, 9780838716465)
Divine providence and dei ex machinis were not permitted to resolve matters in favor of a conventionally acceptable moral statement.
1980: Michael Schiffer, Lessons of the Road: An Overland Journey to the East, page 248 (Kenan Press; →ISBN, 9780671253806)
[…] the crossroads are overrun: Athens, Istanbul, Kabul and Lahore. Turks ride east and Mongols west as a profusion of races and tongues arises in the great court of an Aryan shah. Jesters and dei ex machinis appear and hover in the wings, displacing theories and armies at will.
1980, Dec.: John E. Ullmann of the Hofstra University School of Business, The Improvement of Productivity: Myths and Realities, page 19 (Praeger; →ISBN, 9780030553011)
Few in these rather disillusioned times would argue that technology should or could be the sole potential savior. But whatever one’s viewpoint, the required dei ex machinis are unlikely to materialize when tech-fix is all too often tech-fizzle.
A good jeu d’esprit, perhaps with too many dei ex machinis, but very readable.
1993: Jürgen P. Nautz and Richard Vahrenkamp, Die Wiener Jahrhundertwende: Einflüsse, Umwelt, Wirkungen, page 819 (Böhlau; →ISBN, 9783205980384)
Lest crises assume the role of dei ex machinis, it is necessary to explain their emergence in terms of the political dynamics of sheltered empires suffering from advanced imperial decay and state decline.
1997, Mar.: Philip Gardner, E.M. Forster: The Critical Heritage, page 151 (Routledge; →ISBN, 978‒0415159265)
Helen and the reader have to watch Margaret’s fine edges grow blunt, till at last, by one of those dei ex machinis of which Mr. Forster is too fond, the irreconcilables are reconciled, and some of them live happily ever after.
It represented a new Italian meaning of eagles and gods, dei ex machinis and angels-turned-demons spilled from the realized City of God and become air travellers in the wan hubris of vacationing or on business jaunts.
1999, Jul.: Rudolf E. van Dalm, A Structural Analysis of The Honorary Consul by Graham Greene, page 219 (Rodopi; →ISBN, 978‒90‒420‒0476‒4)
The large quantity of basic elements has the advantage that, once introduced, they can easily be applied at a further stage without giving the impression of being artificially brought in like dei ex machinis.
1999, Oct.: Alexander J. Motyl, Revolutions, Nations, Empires: Conceptual Limits and Theoretical Possibilities, page 143 (Columbia University Press; →ISBN, 9780231114301)
[…] but if things conveniently get in the way only at time t + n, and never at time t, clearly they amount to little more than dei ex machinis.
2003: William Brandt, The Book of the Film of the Story of My Life, page 54 (Jonathan Cape; →ISBN, 9780224060707)
And indeed, if life does imitate art, it imitates the bad scripts, the ones that don’t add up, that make no sense, bristling with dei ex machinis, unmotivated action and arbitrary events. Help, help, oh, help.
2007: Susan Miller, Trust in Texts: A Different History of Rhetoric, page 90 (Southern Illinois University Press; →ISBN, 9780809327881)
Apparitions, marvelous coincidences, and various dei ex machinis endow these true-life fictions with spiritual qualities, useful as new secular verification that God’s plan is […]
(Can we date this quote?), The Bibliograpical Guide to the Global History of Philosophy, page 188 (Brill Archive)
It thus should begin to become clear that Mahatma Gandhi and Vinobha Bhave are not merely charismatic figures that appear on the scene like “dei ex machinis”.
1994: Comité international des études créoles, Association des universités partiellement ou entièrement de langue française, Agence intergouvernementale de la francophonie, and Harmattan (Firm), Études créoles, page 125 (AUPELF)
[…] dans une étude génétique qui privilegierait, sans aucun controle, l’apport africain, surtout lorsqu’on le cherche au niveau de substrats qui ont toujours servi, bien avant ce genre d’étude, de commodes deus ex machina (ou si l’on préfère, de dei ex machinis car je ne veux pas m’aliéner, en plus des substratistes, les latinistes).
1999: Comité international des études créoles and Association des universités partiellement ou entièrement de langue française, Études créoles, volume 22, page 60 (Association des universités partiellement ou entièrement de langue française)
Ce point est capital dans l’approche de ces problèmes en vue de l’élaboration de théories de la créolisation, puisque la langue-source permet d’introduire tous les deus ex machina (ou dei ex machinis) du substrativisme.
2007: Rainer Leschke, Rainer Leschke, Jochen Venus (Hg.), Jochen Venus, Henriette Heidbrink, and Jürgen Sorg, Spielformen im Spielfilm: Zur Medienmorphologie des Kinos nach der Postmoderne, page 123 (transcript Verlag; →ISBN)
[…] unlogische Reste wie Continuity-Fehler oder unmotivierte Zufälle — die bspw. in Form von Treffen die akzeptierten und unverzichtbaren Dei-ex-Machinis des Beziehungsfilms darstellen25 — sind dabei weit weniger störend als nicht nachvollziehbare, psychologisch inkonsistente, unmotivierte Handlungen oder als unplausibel oder nicht authentisch empfundendes Verhalten der Figuren.
1962: María Rosa Lida de Malkiel, La originalidad artística de la Celestina, page 237〃 (Editorial Universitaria de Buenos Aires)
Tampoco Terencio, aunque mucho más atildado, se desdeña de introducir personajes de quita y pon (verdaderos dei ex machinis, parientes y valedores de las malaventuradas heroínas) y hasta figuras que non tienen otro cometido que el de desdoblar un monólogo para hacer menos monótona la exposición (Sosia en la Andria, Sira y Filotis en la Hecyra, Antifón en el Eunuchus, Davo en el Phormio).
