There Is No New Thing Under The Sun

It was Solomon who said “The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.” The words we use today, and the way that we phrase our sentences has all been seen before. The sequence of the words may be different, but the meanings behind the words are the same.

Chiasmus

Main Entry:
chi·as·mus
Pronunciation:
\kī-ˈaz-məs, kē-\
Function:
noun
Etymology:
New Latin, from Greek chiasmos, from chiazein to mark with a chi
Date:
1871
:an inverted relationship between the syntactic elements of parallel phrases (as in Goldsmith’s to stop too fearful, and too faint to go)

The definition above is from Merriam Websters Online Dictionary, http://www.m-w.com/dictionary/chiasmus+/. It is a term which has been replaced with the word plagiarism in todays sophisticated and educated world. I found the following to not only be interesting, but really quite entertaining as well.

For instance, when Benjamin Franklin said “”Where there is a marriage without love, there will be a love without marriage”, he paraphrased, or in todays terms plagiarized, the English writer Thomas Fuller, who wrote in ‘The Holy State and the Profane State’ (1642) “They that marry where they do not love, will love where they do not marry.” This may not be the first instance of the use of this exact phrase, and it certainly was not the last, since it has been used by many other writers since Franklin’s time.

Here is another example of Franklin’s use of others thoughts. “Grief often treads Upon the heels of pleasure, Marry’d in haste, We oft repent at leisure; Some by experience Find these words misplaced, Marry’d at leisure, They repent in haste.” This was lifted in its entirety from English writer William Congreve (1670-1729), who wrote in his 1693 play, The Old Bachelor:

Sharper: Thus grief still treads upon the heels of pleasure: Marry’d in haste, we may repent at leisure.
Setter: Some by experience find those words mis-plac’d: At leisure marry’d they repent in haste.

The list of names of famous politicians and writers who practiced ‘chiasmus’ includes, but is not limited to, Confucius, William Shakespeare, Oscar Wilde, George Bernard Shaw, John F. Kennedy, Winston Churchill, and Ralph Waldo Emerson.

For more information, please visit Chiasmus.com.

This entry was posted on December 30, 2007 at 3:35 pm and is filed under Research, Psychology, News Bulletin, Artists Area. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.

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