Oxymoron:
A figure of speech in which two contradictory words are put together. When we use phrases like male-female, host7guest, civil war, open secret, magic realism or wise fool, we, in fact, use oxymorons. Here is a famous example:
All changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born. (Yeats: "Easter 1916")
Here is another example:
I find no peace, and all my war is done:
I fear, and hope; I burn, and freeze like ice;
(Sir Thomas Wyatt: "I Find No Peace")
Paradox:
A self-contradictory statement that hides a rational meaning. Example: "Sweet are the uses of adversity". The surface meaning of this line appears contradictory as, generally; adversity is bitter. But as we go deeper we find the truth that adversity carries within itself the sweetness of achievement.
Persona:
The speaker in a poem or novel. The speaker is necessarily not the writer of the poem or the novel. For example, the persona of Tennyson's "Ulysses" is Ulysses, the Greek hero, not Tennyson; the persona of Browning's "My Last Duchess" is Duke of Ferrara, not Browning; the persona of Conrad's Heart of Darkness is Marlow, not Conrad, the persona of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice is an omniscient observer, not Jane Austen.
There is confusion whether the first person speaker in a creative work is the author himself or a mask. In Wordsworth's "I wander lonely as a cloud" ("Daffodils"), "I" is closer to Wordsworth's actual
identity. However, in most cases, "I" may be a mask (or an alter ego) of the author. Keats has used first person pronouns in his poems. For instance, "Much have I travelled", "My heart aches", "I will fly to thee", "I will be thy priest" and the like. But he has appreciated "Negative Capability" in a letter written to George and Tom Keats.
T. S. Eliot has appreciated Keats for his "Negative Capability" which he calls "impersonality". Therefore, we cannot blindly say that the "I" in Keats' poems is definitely Keats himself.
To be on the safe side it is better to call the person speaking in a creative work "speaker" instead of "poet" or "novelist", even though the speaker appears to be closer to the writer's own identity. If it is evident that the speaker is a mask, we should call him "persona".
