Antithesis as a Rhetorical Device in Chinese and Western Literature

摘要

The antithetical structure is a common rhetorical figure in literature. Aristotle was the first critic who saw its importance and expounded it fully in his treatise on rhetoric. It is to be distinguished from the parallel structure. Whether in verse or in prose, parallelism is made up syntactically of two or more constituent parts while an antithetical expression admits of two, and two only. Furthermore, parallelism reiterates one central theme or thought, whereas antithesis aims at contrasting two different things