Ways of Reading Third Edition - Martin Montgomery, Alan Durant, Nigel Fabb, Tom Furniss, Sara Mills 2007

12.4 Some effects of juxtaposition
Unit 12 Juxtaposition
Section 3 Attributing meaning

It is not possible to predict one single effect for all cases of juxtaposition, but we can point to a range of characteristic, sometimes overlapping, effects. We have already seen that juxtaposition tends to open up a plurality of possible meaningful connections between juxtaposed elements precisely because simple and straightforward connections are omitted. Juxtaposition can also produce a characteristic sense of tension or incongruency, as in Pound’s imagist poem given above: ’Green arsenic smeared on an egg-white cloth, / Crushed strawberries!’. This incongruency typically demands of the reader some extra effort at comprehension.

Juxtaposition can therefore be thought of as a rhetorical strategy. We have already seen that in some instances juxtaposition works in a way similar to metaphor. This is supported by a humorous serial juxtaposition that is often used in films: the first image typically shows two people beginning to make love and is then cut to an image of, say, volcanoes erupting or fireworks exploding. The juxtaposition of the second image with the first asks us to imagine that there is a metaphorical relation between the couple’s lovemaking and eruptions or fireworks (the second image becomes a metaphor for the first).

Some of the other effects of juxtaposition can be summarized as various kinds of irony (see Unit 11).

12.4.1 Tragic irony

An example of tragic irony may be found at the end of Shakespeare’s King Lear(1606), where Edmund’s dying attempt to revoke his command that Cordelia be murdered and Albany’s supplication ’The gods defend her!’ are immediately juxtaposed with Lear’s arrival carrying Cordelia dead in his arms:

Edmund:

He hath commission from thy wife and me

To hang Cordelia in the prison, and

To lay the blame upon her own despair,

That she fordid herself.

Albany:

The gods defend her! Bear him hence awhile.

Edmund is borne off

Enter Lear with Cordelia dead in his arms; Edgar, Captain and others following

Lear:

Howl, howl, howl

The juxtaposition of Cordelia’s death (and Lear’s reaction to it) with Albany’s prayer (’The gods defend her!’) reinforces the tragic effect here and ironically casts doubt on the very efficacy of prayer. Thus one of the effects of juxtaposition is to undermine or call into question one element through the immediate proximity of the other.

12.4.2 Comic irony

Sometimes the incongruity of the juxtaposition leads to a humorous effect. In radio broadcasting, mixing between alternative sources (e.g. live studio talk and pre-recorded announcements or commercials) can lead to laughably unintended juxtapositions, as in the following examples:

’It’s time now, ladies and gentlemen, for our featured guest, the prominent lecturer and social leader, Mrs Elma Dodge . . .’ (accidental cut to Superman) . . . ’who is able to leap tall buildings in a single bound.’

’So remember, use Pepsodent toothpaste, and brush your teeth . . .’ (Cut in to cleansing product commercial) . . . ’right down the drain!’

In these examples it is important that the cut-in text provides a grammatically well-formed completion of a sentence begun in the initial text, even though its topic in each case is discordantly at odds with that already established by the initial text. Humourous juxtaposition is often deliberately employed as a textual strategy in comic texts (as in the mixing of different registers: see Unit 7).

12.4.3 Destabilizing irony

When elements from recognizably different texts are deliberately rather than fortuitously mixed in with each other, a sense of irony can be created that goes beyond calling one element into question by its juxtaposition with another. In the following example from Ulysses (1922), James Joyce intersperses the description of a place with fragments of a formulaic prayer:

Stale smoky air hung in the study with the smell of drab abraded leather of its chairs. As on the first day he bargained with me here. As it was in the beginning, is now. On the sideboard the tray of Stuart coins, base treasure of a bog: and ever shall be. And snug in their spooncase of purple plush, faded, the twelve apostles having preached to all the gentiles: world without end.

’Drab abraded leather’, ’base treasure of a bog’ and ’snug in their spooncase of purple plush’ are phrases unlikely to occur outside the context of literary descriptions. On the other hand, the fragments ’As it was in the beginning, is now’, ’and ever shall be’ and ’world without end’ clearly belong to a prayer. These two types of text (or the two registers they use) normally operate in very different contexts - the sacred and the secular - but here they are starkly juxtaposed. It would simplify matters if we could claim that this juxtaposition merely calls the prayer into question by inserting it into a secular context; but counterpointed, as they are in this passage, the sacred and the secular simultaneously call each other into question. One way of understanding the presence and relevance of the prayer fragments in the passage is to suppose that they comprise thoughts in the consciousness of the first person narrator (see Unit 21, Narrative point of view), but there is no explicit signal that this is the case, or no reporting clause such as ’The unchanging nature of the room recalled to mind the oft-repeated formula like some ironic echo: “As it was in the beginning, is now . . .”.’ In addition, the weaving together of these different strands of text blurs the boundaries between description of external objects and events and internal states of consciousness. It also - and perhaps more interestingly - destabilizes the text, so that we are no longer certain where different parts of it are coming from. There is no longer a single, authoritative, narrative voice making clear to us where one element or fragment stands in relation to another.

Although simple juxtaposition is a general feature of communication, its special use as a rhetorical device to startle the viewer or reader seems particularly noticeable in twentieth-century art forms, including both pictorial fine art and poetry. It also finds its way into film and advertising images as a pervasive technique for intriguing, mystifying and holding the viewer. It is a specialized invitation to read into the message meanings that are only there by implication because of the lack of an explicit connection between the elements that are juxtaposed. Its effects are multiple; but a sense of irony, humour, surprise or enigma is often produced in our reading of it. Like other literary and artistic techniques, juxtaposition can be used (in the words of Magritte) to evoke ’the mystery of beings that normally strike us only as familiar’.