The Language of Paradox by Cleanth Brooks
• Cleanth Brooks is an American teacher and critic. He is a strong proponent
of new criticism and focuses on close reading and structural analysis of
poetry.
• Highly influential in establishing new criticism as an academic discipline.
• New criticism ignores the role of reader’s response, historical background,
author’s intention, and moral biases in interpreting literary texts.
• Irony and paradox are two key words in new criticism. Irony refers to “the
obvious warping of a statement by the context”, whereas paradox is the
tension at the surface of a verse that can lead to apparent contradictions and
hypocrisies. It ‘involves the resolution of the opposites”.
SUMMARY OF THE ESSAY
• Brooks begins the essay by discussing common prejudices on paradox. He
says that paradox is often considered as intellectual than emotional, clever
than profound, and rational than divinely irrational. He dismisses these
notions and argues that ‘paradox is the language appropriate and inevitable
to poetry’.
• He points at the contradictions that are inherent in poetry and states that if
those contradictions do not exist, some of the best poetry will not exist
today. He illustrates this by citing examples from canonical poems.
• Brooks comments that William Wordsworth is a poet who distrusts sophistry
and relies on simplicity. Though he will not provide too many examples for
paradox, some of his best poems emerge out of paradoxical situations.
EXAMPLE 1 (showing paradox)
• He quotes from the poem It is a Beauteous Evening and illustrates that the
poem is based on paradoxical context. Looking at the evening sky, the poet
is filled with worship whereas the girl who walks with him is not at all
moved by the sight.
• The paradox is revealed when the poet says that the girl is deeply devotional
because she unconsciously sympathizes with all forms of nature throughout
the year whereas the poet’s worship is temporary and sporadic. The self-
righteous nun like evening sky is contrasted with the innocence of the
girl who wears no sign of devotion but is in communion with nature.
• Paradox springs from the very nature of poetic language. In poetic
use, both connotation and denotation gain prominence. The poet has
to make up his language as he goes.
• In scientific use of language, terms are stabilized and frozen in strict
denotation. The poet has to work with metaphors to express the
subtle nature of human emotion. Poetic language involves continual
tilting of the planes, necessary overlapping, discrepancies and
contradictions. The nature of poetic language forces poets to be
paradoxical.
• In Wordsworth’s Evening sonnet, the evening is described as
“beauteous, calm, free, holy, quiet, breathless”. By placing the
adjectives calm and breathless-which suggests excitement that upsets
the calm and quiet- together, the poem invokes paradox.
EXAMPLE 2
• Brooks delves into an in-depth analysis of the poem Canonization
by John Donne. According to him, this poem provides a concrete
example for extension of the basic metaphor into a paradox
• In the poem, profane love is treated equal to divine love. The poet
has daringly used religious terms to describe two lovers who have
renounced the world and have hermitage in each other’s body. By
describing the lovers fit for canonization, the poet has produced an
effective parody of Christian sainthood.
• The double and contradictory meaning of the word ‘die’ for is
another instance of paradox. The lovers are willing to die if they
cannot live by love. Here the poet hints at the double meaning of
the word. In 16 and 17 century, the word ‘die’ refers to experience
the consummation of the act of love. In that sense, it also means
their love is not exhausted by lust.
• At another instance, the poet stresses on the duality and singleness
of love. The lovers are compared to phoenix, which dies to be born.
Similarly the lovers have renounced life in order to gain most
intense life. He also quotes Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet to
emphasize the metaphor of love and pilgrimage to the holy land.
• Brooks has offered a detailed analysis of the poem and states that
the only way the poet could say what canonization says is by
paradox. Donne has maintained love and religion and has
effectively portrayed the complexity of the experience.
• According to Brooks, Donne is obsessed with the problem of unity
and resolves the contradictory ideas by employing paradoxes.
• By quoting Shakespeare’s “The Phoenix and Turtle”, he establishes
that paradox is the only solution to unite the double/ multiple
names of life.
• He concludes by commenting that the urn in which the ash of the
lovers is kept is the poem itself. Like the phoenix it rises from the
ashes and we have to be prepared to accept the paradoxes of
imagination.
