02/24/07
Nineteenth century scholar and psychologist Alexander Bain wrote an excellent textbook on rhetoric, English Composition and Rhetoric, of which I own an edition published in the 1870s. His explanations of the key terms, such as simile, metaphor, metonymy, synechdoche, etc., are quite clear. I'm scouring the book, now, looking for his perspective on contrast.
Bain offers the standard synonym for simile, comparison. But hey: In modern usage, the word comparison no longer implies just similitude, though, does it? 1(b) below is more in accordance with the way I use the word:
1: the act or process of comparing : as a: the representing of one thing or person as similar to or like another b: an examination of two or more items to establish similarities and dissimilarities [his faults seem minor by comparison]
While in written composition one often uses similes, I note that the modern stand-up comic tends to use the opposite type of comparison, dissimilarities, if not always out-and-out Antithesis. Dennis Miller's act is filled with such figures:
The current tax code is harder to understand than Bob Dylan reading Finnegans Wake in a wind tunnel.
Americans stick their nose where it doesn't belong more than Cyrano de Bergerac giving head.
-
I say the word
fuck
more often than Jake La Motta being Rolfed. Einstein proved that reality itself makes less sense than Rod Steiger's dream journal.
That latter could be categorized as an hyperbole. But that's not quite the point, is it?
In Miller's case, his contrasts are as funny as his similes. That's the source of much of his humor. And Miller's rants do characterize what Bain saw as the nature of the figures of speech:
A Figure of Speech is a deviation from the plain and ordinary mode of speaking, with a view to greater effect.
Miller's greater effect
is humor and wit (themselves chapters in Bain's book).
I like Bain's explanation for the figures:
Several of te more important Figures have refrence to the operations of the human Understanding, or Intellect, and may be classified accordingly. All our intelletual powers are reducible to three simple modes of working.
And he lists them and explains them as
- Discrimination, or Feeling of Difference (he lists Antithesis or Contrast)
Similarity, or the Feeling of agreement- Retentiveness (he lists Metonymy)
So I see that Bain could no doubt explain Dennis Miller's pre-9/11 act. It's a pity that the Mill scholar is deader than Miller's career. If not much deader.
Which brings to mind the classic comparison of dissimilarity: deader than a doornail.
It began life as pure simile, though, as dead as a doornail.
Both are now cliches, as well as the reference an atavism.
I won't use this comparison until I dare write less dead than a doornail.
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