paradox, statement that appears self-contradictory but actually has a basis in truth, e.g., Oscar Wilde's "Ignorance is like a delicate fruit; touch it and the bloom is gone." Many New Critics maintained that paradox is not just a rhetorical or illustrative device but a basic aspect of all poetic language.

Apparently self-contradictory statement whose underlying meaning is revealed only by careful scrutiny. Its purpose is to arrest attention and provoke fresh thought, as in the statement “Less is more.” In poetry, paradox functions as a device encompassing the tensions of error and truth simultaneously, not necessarily by startling juxtapositions but by subtle and continuous qualifications of the ordinary meanings of words. When a paradox is compressed into two words, as in “living death,” it is called an oxymoron.

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Paradox derived from the statement attributed to the Cretan prophet Epimenides (6th century BC) that all Cretans are liars. If Epimenides' statement is taken to imply that all statements made by Cretans are false, then since Epimenides was a Cretan, his statement is false (i.e., not all Cretans are liars). The paradox's simplest form arises from considering the sentence “This sentence is false.” If it is true, then it is false, and if it is false, then it is true. Consideration of such semantic paradoxes led logicians to distinguish between object language and metalanguage and to conclude that no language can consistently contain a complete semantic theory for its own sentences.

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