Paradox

 

Paradox

Paradox is actually a figure of speech used in literature since distant past. By using the technique of paradox, a poet compares two dissimilar things. In everyday life too, we make the use of paradox. For instance, “Truth is honey, which is bitter”. In this example, sweetness of honey is contrasted with the bitterness of truth. In the poem “Death, Be Not Proud” John Donne says. “And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.”  ‘Death’ is considered as end of life. But here, Donne argues that ‘Death’ itself will ‘die’. So, poets are using the technique of paradox since long.

However, it is Cleanth Brooks who brought the term ‘Paradox’ into discussion. Brooks is an important 20^th century critic. He belongs to the school of New Criticism. In his book, “The Well Wrought Urn” (1947) he made a claim that “the language of poetry is the language of paradox”. Brooks focuses on paradox while arguing that the meaning of poetry emerges through such paradoxes. Being a ‘new’ critic, Brooks emphasises the ‘text’. For the interpretation of a poem one should not go beyond the text. If one tries to find out the working of paradox in the poem, the meaning will automatically emerge from it.   

Brooks points to William Wordsworth's poem "It is a beauteous evening, calm and free". He begins by saying that at first, the speaker is filled with worship, while his female companion does not. But the paradox, discovered by the poem’s end, is that the girl is fuller of worship than the speaker. The reason for this is that unlike the speaker, the girl is in tune with nature.

Brooks ends his essay with a reading of John Donne’s poem "The Canonization", which uses a paradox. Using a charged term to describe the speaker’s physical love as saintly, Donne argues that in rejecting the material world and withdrawing to a world of each other, the two lovers are appropriate candidates for canonization. This seems to parody both love and religion.

In short, in “The Well Wrought Urn” Brooks shows that paradox is so essential to poetic meaning that paradox is almost identical to poetry. Brooks’ use of paradox emphasized the indeterminate lines between form and content.

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