1. 151 PARADOX by Don L. F. Nilsen and Alleen Pace Nilsen

2. 152 GILBERT AND SULLIVAN Gilbert and Sullivan often relied on paradox for comic effect. In The Pirates of Penzance, they composed a song about paradoxes: How quaint the ways of paradox! At common sense she gaily mocks! A paradox, a paradox, A most ingenious paradox! Ha! ha! ha! ha! (Nilsen & Nilsen 219)

3. 153 GREEK PHILOSOPHERS The Greek philosophers often wrestled with paradoxes. The most famous was credited to the Cretan philosopher Epimenides: “All Cretans are liars.” Epimenides was a Cretan. Therefore, If he is lying, then the statement must be true. But if the statement is true, he must be lying. (Nilsen & Nilsen 219)

4. 154 PARADOX VS. CONTRADICTION Paradoxes are statements that seem contradictory, unbelievable, or absurd, but in some sense are nevertheless true. Because paradoxes highlight breakdowns in our expectations of a logical universe, they are sources of both delight and consternation as the human mind works to figure out how people can in good faith talk about a “large mouse” running between the legs of a “small elephant” or can make sense out of the Yiddish curse, “He should drop dead, God forbid!” (Nilsen & Nilsen 219)

5. 155 SIGNIFICANT PARADOXES FROM THE 16 TH CENTURY TO THE 20 TH CENTURY Sits he on ever so high a throne, a man still sits on his bottom. (Michel Elyquem de Montaigne, 1533-1592) We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another. (Jonathan Swift, 1667-1745)

6. 156 I laugh, so that I may not cry. (Pierre Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais, 1732-1799)  Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing. (Oscar Wilde, 1854-1900)

7. 157 !!There ain’t any answer. There ain’t going to be any answer. There never has been an answer. That’s the answer. (Gertrude Stein, 1874-1946) The vital question today is not whether there will be life after death, but whether there was life before death. (Marshall McLuhan, 1911-1990)

8. 158 Visual Paradox

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14. 1514 References: Brooks, Cleanth. "The Language of Paradox." Contemporary Literary Criticism: Literary and Cultural Studies. Eds. Robert Con Davis, and Ronald Schleifer. New York: Longman, 1989, 32-42. Falletta, Nicholas. The Paradoxicon. New York, NY: John Wiley, 1983. Fry, William F., Jr. "Humor and Paradox." American Behavioral Scientist. 30.1 (1987): 42-71. Gans, Eric. Signs of Paradox, Irony, Resentment, and Other Mimetic Structures Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1997. Hofstadter, Douglas R. Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid. New York, NY: Vintage Books, 1980. Leiber, Justin. Paradoxes. London, England: Duckworth, 1993. Morreall, John. “Aristotle and the Paradox of Tragedy.” Delta Epsilon Signa Journal 24.2 (1979): 50-56.

15. 15 Nilsen, Don L. F. "Parody, Paradox, Nonsense, and Legends." Humor Scholarship: A Research Bibliography. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1993, 101-112. Nilsen, Don L. F. "'The Seriousness of Humor' And Other Antithetical Paradoxes." California English 20.5 (1984): 14-15 and 22. Nilsen, Alleen Pace, and Don L. F. Nilsen. Encyclopedia of 20 th Century American Humor. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2000. Rescher, Nicholas. Paradoxes. Peru, IL: Carus Publishing Company, 2001. Poundstone, William. Labyrinths of Reason: Paradox, Puzzles, and the Frailty of Knowledge. New York: Anchor, 1988.

16. 1516 Seward, Samuel S. Jr. The Paradox of the Ludicrous. Stanford, CA: Stanford Univ Press, 1930. Shaw, David W. Elegy and Paradox. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994. Shershow, Scott Cutler. Laughing Matters: The Paradox of Comedy. Amherst: Univ of Mass Press, 1986. Stainsbury, Richard Mark. Paradoxes. Cambridge, England: Press Syndicate of the University of Cambridge, 1988. Woodcock, George. The Paradox of Oscar Wilde. London, England: T. V. Boardman, 1949.