GREEN, Roland et al., Eds. The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics. Fourth Edition. Princeton University Press, 2012.
[p. 988] or synoeciosis (Gr. “pointed foolish”; Lat. contrapositum). A figure of speech that yokes together two seemingly contradictory elements. Oxymoron is, thus, a form of condensed paradox. (…) Note, however, that oxymoron, which reveals a compulsion to fuse all experience into a unity, is to be distinguished from antithesis, which tends to divide and categorize elements of experience. Significantly, the latter figure with its basis in rationality, dominates the poetry of 18th c., a period that regarded the figures of the baroque poets as examples of “bad taste” and “false wit”. (F.J. Warnke; A.W. Halsall; T.V.F. Brogan)