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Self-contradiction

Device
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

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The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

The deliberate use of contradictory statements or expressions within verse

Detailed Definition
Self-contradiction in poetry occurs when a speaker or text asserts opposing ideas, emotions, or images within close proximity, often to convey psychological complexity, irony, or existential tension; rather than signaling error, this device reveals layered truths, as in Donne’s paradoxes or Dickinson’s oscillations between faith and doubt.
Example
Example in poetry:
Walt Whitman’s “Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself” exemplifies self-contradiction; In “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” Keats claims “Beauty is truth, truth beauty”—yet questions this later; Emily Dickinson’s “Much Madness is divinest Sense” juxtaposes madness and sanity as equivalent; T.S. Eliot’s “I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be” contradicts his earlier dramatic persona
Additional Notes
Self-contradiction: A figure of speech or a structural element where a statement, idea, or image in a poem is directly or implicitly at odds with another part of the same poem or speaker's argument; can be used for irony or to show complexity/ambiguity.
Also Known As
Paradox oxymoron contradictory statement Contradictio in adiecto
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