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Puns and Character Foils. What is a Pun?. pun, or paronomasia, is a form of word play that deliberately exploits an ambiguity between similar-sounding words for humorous or rhetorical effect.
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What is a Pun? • pun, or paronomasia, is a form of word play that deliberately exploits an ambiguity between similar-sounding words for humorous or rhetorical effect. • Such ambiguity may arise from the intentional misuse of homophonical, homographical, homonymic, polysemic, metonymic or metaphoricallanguage. • Play on the multiple meanings of a word or on two words that sound alike but have different meanings.
Example • “...ask for me to-morrow, and you shall find me a grave man.”-Mercutio • Grave meaning "serious", but in this case, dead. {Act III} • Another pun from Romeo and Juliet is when Montague is speaking of Romeo's depression. The line "Away from the light steals home my heavy son," makes a pun on the sun
Character Foil • A foil is a person who contrasts with another character (usually the protagonist) in order to highlight various features of the main character's personality: to throw the character of the protagonist into sharper focus. • a character who represents a sharp contrast with the protagonist and thus serves to stress and highlight the protagonists distinctive temperament
Examples • Rosaline to Juliet • Paris to Romeo • Mercutio to Romeo