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Literary Definitions

A structural paradox is one that is necessary to the entirety, of a poem. The works of poets such as John Donne are famed for their paradoxical usage in their metaphysical poetry. One the sonnets which features in Good Friday, 1613. Riding Westward begins with a prime example of a usage: "If poisonous minerals, and if that tree/ Whose fruit threw death on else immortal us." The connotations seem to be some- what inextricable. It seems to imply that the fruit was poisonous and burdened us with original sin. However what Donne is exposing is the way that the real paradox lies in mankind as a whole. After all we cannot be immortal except for one "brush with death", because the very term immortal means to live forever.
             Some critical theory goes so far as to suggest that the language of poetry is the language of paradox. "A paradoxical vision of the behavior and state of human kind is inherent in much nonsense poetry and also in plays belonging to the Theatre of the Absurd". Although as Brooks states he is not interested in enumerating the possible variations; but in seeing the way that paradoxes spring from the very nature of the poet/ author/ playwright's language. .
             Whilst paradox is a concept which is central to formalism, another central concept is of langue and parole which are of fundamental importance to structuralism. They are terms introduced by Ferdinand de Saussure that are unsurprisingly French, for which the English translations in short (and approximately) are "language" and "speech". "Langue denotes the system or totality of language shared by the "collective consciousness"" This means the complete notion of language as we know it, every element of language plus the rules for their combination, undoubtedly including grammar, syntax. For instance the overwhelming trait of George Elliot is the langue in her work, for instance the very first paragraph of Middlemarch opens with the second sentence being almost unbearably long.


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