An elaborate, fanciful, and intellectually striking image, idea, or comparison used especially in Renaissance and baroque poetry to create surprising connections between unlike things.
From Italian concetto, derived from Latin conceptus (something conceived). This term was adopted into English from Italian literary criticism during the Renaissance revival of Italian art and literature.
When Shakespeare wrote that his lover's eyes are 'nothing like the sun,' he was deploying a concetto—a witty, intellectual reversal that makes the beloved seem more real and human than traditional flattery could ever achieve.
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