In The Language of Paradox Cleanth
Brooks takes on the language of poetry, stating that at its core poetry is the
language of paradox. Brooks bases his position on the contradictions that are
inherent in poetry and his feelings that if those contradictions didn't exist
then neither would some of the best poetry we have today Using works from
Wordsworth to Shakespeare Brooks shows how the only way some ideas can be
expressed is through paradox. His best example of this idea is from Coleridge’s
description of imagination: “Reveals itself in the balance or
reconcilement of opposite discordant qualities: of sameness, with difference;
of the general, with the concrete;”
In
The Language of Paradox Brooks maintains that the true function of literary
criticism is first to understand and then to analyse “the organic nature of
poetry.”
