The classical divinities and heroes found in Chaucer's poems "reveal feminizing and subversive attitudes not readily apparent on the surface because he appropriates the essentially patriarchal discourse of medieval exegesis for ironic (or even
antiphrastic) use" (Chance xxiv).
At a medicinal level is used as anti-diarrheal, anti-diabetic and antiviral, to treat malaria and
antiphrastic and insecticidal,(5).
Periphrastic antonomasias are used for the Minister of Tourism in connection to her spouse's business ("the blonde from Golden Blitz"), to her immoral behavior ("the maiden from Plescoi"; the appellative bears the
antiphrastic stamp), (revistaflacara.ro, March 3, 2009) A deputy is labeled "the black tulip of Ferentari" (adevarul.ro, December 14, 2008) referring to the fact that the politician does welfare work in a disfavored zone of Bucharest.
The antiphrasis, then, is not only the irony of the name Mignonne, but it is the
antiphrastic reversal of his own perception as well: he sees not the panther before him, passive and sated from a recent meal, but rather the dangerous knife-wielding Mignonne, the lover from his past who reflects his own violence.
References to the pastoral in this poem are ironically
antiphrastic. The title establishes a direct connection with the pastoral mode.
His procedure is arguably "
antiphrastic" insofar as notion X or Y is devolved into its opposite, and certainly hyperbolical, for the same idea is exaggerated, blown out of proportions.
cohyponymic transfer, antiphrasis, auto-antonomy, and auto-converseness, the absence of pertinent cases may simply be due to their great rareness; nothing, for example, should prevent in principle a diminutive pattern from turning into an augmentative one through extended
antiphrastic use of diminutives, followed by a reinterpretation (e.g.
The transcendent, with
antiphrastic irony; is at pains to identify itself as impure.
as a weapon." The decoding of ironic parody is
antiphrastic - the reader is expected to perform a "semantic inversion" of the text's stated meaning (52-53).
This sonnet has all the ingredients of the neniale tradition: extensive use of the suffix -oco, parody of the high-style (especially Petrarchan) descriptio mulieris, grotesque exaltation of awkward physical traits, paradoxical and often
antiphrastic similes, and explicit allusions to earthy, carnal desire, but especially the distinctive linguistic trait attributed to Mugello-speakers by Lorenzo de' Medici, Luigi Pulci, and others, the generalization of the voiced velar sound gh to replace standard Italian voiced palatal sound gl (although, as illustrated by Arrigo Castellani, gh is the legitimate Florentine result for words containing Latin-GL-): gighioco, voghia, dorghi, ghaghiardoco, cighio.