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One author has described this "stylistic mannerism" to be inherited from "an earlier, possibly common-Germanic, poetic tradition"; [3] he notes that understatement is also found in mediaeval German poetry and Old Norse poetry. Such understatement may have the effect of mocking irony, humour, emphasis, and the tempering of an (otherwise rather ...
Understatement often leads to litotes, rhetorical constructs in which understatement is used to emphasize a point. It is a staple of humour in English-speaking cultures. For example, in Monty Python's The Meaning of Life, an Army officer has just lost his leg. When asked how he feels, he looks down at his bloody stump and responds, "Stings a bit."
In rhetoric, litotes (/ l aɪ ˈ t oʊ t iː z, ˈ l aɪ t ə t iː z /, US: / ˈ l ɪ t ə t iː z /), [1] also known classically as antenantiosis or moderatour, is a figure of speech and form of irony in which understatement is used to emphasize a point by stating a negative to further affirm a positive, often incorporating double negatives for effect.
"The Pond", for the Atlantic Ocean ("across the pond"). Similarly, "The Ditch" for the Tasman Sea, between Australia and New Zealand. "The outback"; under its original etymology in the late 19th century, this was a meiosis comparison between the vast empty regions of central Australia and the backyard of a house; but its usage today is so common and so far distanced from its etymology that the ...
Irony is not the only literary term to which Schlegel assigns extra-literary significance. Indeed, irony itself is presented as the uneasy synthesis of allegory and wit . Summarized by scholar Manfred Frank : "As allegory, the individual exceeds itself in the direction of the infinite, while as wit the infinite allows the unity that breaks from ...
However, they all became more serious after their initial work. Wain is still known for his poetry (for example, his Apology for Understatement) and literary interests (contributions to The Observer), although his work is no longer as popular as it was. Critical remarks about him by Amis and Larkin in their posthumously published letters may ...
The repetition of identical or similar sounds, usually accented vowel sounds and succeeding consonant sounds at the end of words, and often at the ends of lines of prose or poetry. [ 7 ] For example, in the following lines from a poem by A. E. Housman , the last words of both lines rhyme with each other.
John A. Rea wrote about the poem's "alliterative symmetry", citing as examples the second line's "hardest – hue – hold" and the seventh's "dawn – down – day"; he also points out how the "stressed vowel nuclei also contribute strongly to the structure of the poem" since the back round diphthongs bind the lines of the poem's first ...