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litotes

   Also found in: Dictionary/thesaurus, Wikipedia, Hutchinson 0.03 sec.
litotes (lī`tətēz'), figure of speech in which a statement is made by indicating the negative of its opposite, e.g., "not many" meaning "a few." A form of irony irony, figure of speech in which what is stated is not what is meant. The user of irony assumes that his reader or listener understands the concealed meaning of his statement.
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, litotes is meant to emphasize by understating. Its opposite is hyperbole hyperbole (hīpûr`bəlē)
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In this reading the poem seems to invoke litotes, the rhetorical trope of understatement familiar from the bumper sticker "One atom bomb can spoil your whole day," but the usual form requires a strong sense of the scale of the event against which the understatement plays.
Paul uses the rhetorical figure litotes, the denial of its opposite, to stress a point.
Strings of negatives, litotes, double negatives, and antitheses in the Liberata are catalogued and interpreted in light of the Counter-Reformation's emphasis on prescription, censorship, and "the drive towards narrative closure" (109).
 
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