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Literary notes about Inversion (AI summary)

The term "inversion" in literature is employed both as a device that reverses order and as a metaphor for deeper transformations. In some texts, it refers to a reversal of roles or situations that turn back on their originator—a notion well articulated when Bergson describes situations that recoil on the author ([1]) and as an inversion of common sense observed in various contexts ([2], [3]). In other cases, inversion is used to create playful distortions or antitheses in language, as seen in Galdós's clever wordplay ([4]) and Boccaccio’s jesting inversion of a word's meaning ([5]). Moreover, its use extends to structural manipulations, such as the reordering in dream sequences reported by Freud ([6], [7]) and even to musical arrangements where chords are transferred between orchestral groups ([8], [9]). Philosophical and political discourses sometimes employ inversion to critique established orders or expectations, such as the inversion of social relations in Plato’s work ([10]) or the ironic inversion in political ideals noted by Chesterton ([11]). This multifaceted use highlights inversion as a powerful tool for challenging norms, creating irony, and exploring unexpected reversals throughout literary and analytical works.
  1. In every case the root idea involves an inversion of roles, and a situation which recoils on the head of its author.
    — from Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic by Henri Bergson
  2. It is a very special inversion of common sense.
    — from Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic by Henri Bergson
  3. Is there a name for this inversion of common sense?
    — from Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic by Henri Bergson
  4. retruécano m antithetical inversion, (verbal) jugglery.
    — from Doña Perfecta by Benito Pérez Galdós
  5. The same may be said of the jesting inversion of the word philosophers (phisopholers, Fisofoli ) in the next line.
    — from The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio by Giovanni Boccaccio
  6. Further inversion occurs in the sequence of events, so that in the dream the cause is placed after the effect.
    — from A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis by Sigmund Freud
  7. We already know the inversion of the sense, substitution by the opposite.
    — from A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis by Sigmund Freud
  8. Another excellent method consists in transferring the same chord or its inversion from one orchestral group to another.
    — from The Declaration of Independence of the United States of America by Thomas Jefferson
  9. In each case the composer may resort to the inversion of the normal order of instruments, duplication of parts, or the two processes in combination.
    — from The Declaration of Independence of the United States of America by Thomas Jefferson
  10. The inversion of all social relations.
    — from The Republic of Plato by Plato
  11. By a strange inversion the political idealist often does not get what he asks for, but does get what he wants.
    — from What's Wrong with the World by G. K. Chesterton

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