Week: Feb. 14-21: Shakespeare and Biblical Chiasmus

Shakespeare chiasmus from Othello, 3.3-- Who dotes, yet doubts; suspects, yet strongly loves.

("Dotes"=A, "doubts"=B... ..."suspects"=B, "strongly loves"=A)

I liked this chiasmus because the inverted meaning is what made it a chiasmus and it just happened to be the first example of inverted meaning chiasmus I came across, so it stood out. But, the rhythm is solid and dramatic (just like good ole Shakespeare to do). It also emphasizes a strong point: love and doubt can exist simultaneously. And, as Shakespeare points out, it's usually not a good thing; so I thought a chiasmus in this context was very appropriate and drove the irony home.

I didn't feel like doing an imitation on this one, so I will do the imitation in the biblical example below.

"Naked I rose from the Earth; to the grave I fall clothed."  Phillippians 1:15-17

("Naked"=A, "rose"=B, "Earth"=C... ..."grave"=C, "fall"=B, "clothed"=A)

I liked this one because it was a complex chiasmus, but simple at the same time. It's one of those that makes a person stop because they know there's something there, even if they don't know about chiasmus or if they weren't looking for chiasmus. If they do know about chiasmus, it's a simple enough example of one that the person will pick up on it if they analyze it. So, that's what I mean by it being simple. Again, like the Shakespeare example I gave, the chiasmus in this example emphasizes the irony of what's being said, gives it more kick and power. I also liked it because the irony of the sentence is brought out by the chiasmus mirroring the structure of the sentence, but by doing so--by puting them on the same level--the reader sees just how contrary the two ideas are (coming in to the world pure and leaving it with baggage). This stimulates deeper thought on the reader's end. So I think it's a unique juxtaposition that, in the end, can be a powerful rhetorical technique to get readers to see opposing in one sentence instead of five paragraphs, for example.

Let's see if I got this: parataxis, running sentence (grammatically complete after "rose"), verb style, and some isotope.

Imitation:

In my imitation I wanted to have fun with it and practice chiasmus, so I decided to make it perfect chiasmus througout.

From the Earth rose I, naked; clothed I fall to the grave.