What is the name for the rhetorical device used in this sentence?Is it bathos, or is that something else?
quote:
He has a wife, two children, four grandchildren, and a tractor.
Build a man a fire and he's warm for a day. Set a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
August 16, 2010, 07:52
zmježd
bathos
Works for me.
—Ceci n'est pas un seing.
August 16, 2010, 18:09
Geoff
Wasn't Bathos one of the Three Musketeers?
It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society. -J. Krishnamurti
August 16, 2010, 19:55
<Proofreader>
No, a bathos is where you go to meet other men.
August 16, 2010, 20:02
Geoff
I thought you'd find women frum da 'hood there - bat hos
It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society. -J. Krishnamurti
August 16, 2010, 20:04
Kalleh
Is it a rhetorical device, though? Maybe I am splitting hairs, which I have a tendency of doing.
August 17, 2010, 00:47
arnie
I'd say so. Why not? Provided it was intentional, of course, which this example was, clearly.
Build a man a fire and he's warm for a day. Set a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
August 17, 2010, 05:27
zmježd
Provided it was intentional, of course, which this example was, clearly.
Ah, the intention of the Other. So, what is unintentional bathos? (In keeping with the rapidly declining standards of the age, Bath OS is a new, Britain-made operating system which runs on Somerset architecture computers.
—Ceci n'est pas un seing.
August 17, 2010, 08:29
arnie
Bathos is the introduction of some jarringly out-of-place idea that produces amusement in the reader/listener. Often analogies are used like Douglas Adams's The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don't.
A naive writer will sometimes intoduce accidental bathos - from some excerpts I've read Dan Brown (The da Vinci Code, et al) is a prime source for unintended humour.
The notorious Scottish poetaster William McGonagall was also a great unconcious user of bathos. For example, from Jottings of New York:
quote:
Oh, mighty city of New York, you are wonderful to behold-- Your buildings are magnificent-- the truth be it told-- They were the only thing that seemed to arrest my eye, Because many of them are thirteen storeys high
Build a man a fire and he's warm for a day. Set a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
August 17, 2010, 08:42
zmježd
quote:
Oh, mighty city of New York, you are wonderful to behold-- Your buildings are magnificent-- the truth be it told-- They were the only thing that seemed to arrest my eye, Because many of them are thirteen storeys high
Proof, if any be needed, that rhyme and meter don't necessarily make for good poetry.
—Ceci n'est pas un seing.
August 17, 2010, 09:08
<Proofreader>
quote:
Proof, if any be needed, that rhyme and meter don't necessarily make for good poetry.
Was that directed at me? Oh, now that I read it again, perhaps not.
August 17, 2010, 09:36
zmježd
Was that directed at me?
Nope.
—Ceci n'est pas un seing.
August 17, 2010, 16:43
Geoff
On an aviation site that I frequent a writer described the climbing ability of a certain light airplane thus: "It has all the climbing ability of a homesick manhole cover." That upends the "homesick angel" analogy often heard, with great bathic - and comic- effect, IMHO.
It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society. -J. Krishnamurti
August 17, 2010, 20:03
Kalleh
quote:
Proof, if any be needed, that rhyme and meter don't necessarily make for good poetry.
Ain't it the truth? Some of my favorite poems lack meter and rhymes.
August 18, 2010, 05:33
zmježd
rhyme and meter
I should have typed, unvaried or fixed meter, because in truth all linguistics utterances are metrical.
[Edited: Added missing copula.]This message has been edited. Last edited by: zmježd,