Handbook of Classical Sanskrit Rhetoric /51

Introduction
 
egeg 'Tis not enough no harshness gives offense,

The sound must seem an echo to the sense:

Soft is the strain when Zephyr gently blows,
 

And the smooth stream in smoother number flows.

-- Pope, Essay on Criticism
 
-
 

 
35. Oxymoron: It is the yoking of two terms which are appar-

ently self-contradictory.
 
eg
 
eg Here's much to do with hate, but more with love.
 

Why then, O brawling love! O loving hate!
 

O anything of nothing first create!
 

O heavy lightness, serious vanity!
 

Mishappen chaos of well seeming forms!
 

Feather of lead, bright smoke, cold fire, sick health!

Still-waking sleep, that is not what it is!
 

This love I feel, that feel no love in this.
 
xxxix
 

-- Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

 
36. Parable: (Greek para ballo meaning I throw beyond) It is an

allegorical story giving a lofty idea or moral. The New

Testament gives a good number of popular stories containing

high moral lessons. The parable of the sower is a fine example of

it. In Sanskrit literature, such parables are abundant in the

Upanişṣads, the Mahabharata and specially tales and fables of
ābhārata and specially tales and fables of
the Pañcatantra.
 

 
37. Paradox: It is a poetic statement or proposition which seems

self-contradictory or absurd, but in reality expresses a possi-
ble truth.
 
Digitized by
 
eg
ble truth.
 
eg Art is a form of lying in order to tell the truth.
 

He is guilty of being innocent. -- Pablo Picasso
 

 
38. Paralipsis: It is a rhetorical expression that gives the suggestion

by deliberately concise treatment of a topic, that much of significance
is being omitted.
 
eg
is being omitted.
 
eg I cannot delay to tell you how political quarrels might be

otherwise settled. But grant that they cannot. Grant that no

law of reason can be understood by nations; no law of justice
submitted to by them.
submitted to by them. -- Ruskin
 
Google
 
Original from
 
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN