Litotes Types of Figurative Language
Mis-shapen chaos of well-seeming forms Feather of lead,
bright smoke
,
cold fire
,
sick health
‖ Here is the example taken from ―A Linguistic Guide to English Poetry‖
by Geoffrey Leech 1969: 141-142: 22
Party in such
sweet sorrow
. Romeo and Juliet II.ii 23
Thou art to me a
delicious torment
. Emerson, ‗Friendship‘, Essays
24 To
live a life half-died, a
living death
. Milton, Samson Agonistes
25 And love‘s the
noblest frailty
of the mind. Dryden, The Indian Emperror, II.ii
Example 20 and 21 testify the humanity‘s ability to experience pleasure mingled with pain: a type of apparent absurdity which has classical
precedent of Catullus well- known paradox ‗Odi et amo‘ ‗I hate and I love.
We probably interpret them as ‗a mixture of sweetness and sorrow‘, ‗a mixture of delight
and torment‘, although it could be argued that it is a mysterious merging of contrary emotions that is imaginatively realized in
such expressions rather than their coexistence. Milton‘s oxymoron 22 ‗a living death‘, referring to Samson‘s
blindness, can be resolved by construing
death
, by metaphorical extension as ‗a condition which seems like death‘.
Dryden‘s ‗noblest frailty‘ 23 is not so much a logical absurdity as a contradiction of accepted values. Nobility is associated with strength, and
ignobilit y with weakness. Hence ‗noblest frailty‘ argues a reassessment of
our moral assumptions, by telling us that nobility and weakness are
compatible. Another possible interpretation would be to construe ‗frailty‘ as emotional vulnerability rather than moral weakness.