Friday, April 8, 2011

[Textbook] Ancient Rhetorics chapter on "Style, Memory and Delivery" - Notes Pt. 1

Yes, this is only the first part. I haven't had the courage to type out several more pages of notes quite yet.

Style - persuasive or extraordinary use of language, and the 3rd canon of rhetoric
Sentence composition - use of balanced phrases
      Antithesis - contrary or contradictory ideas expressed in phrases that are grammatically alike.
     Stylistic ornaments: Simile
                                  Metaphor
                                  Personification
      Schemes/figures {Greek "schemata"; Latin "figura"}
      Manifested in a good style are: correctness
                                                     clearness
                                                     appropriateness
                                                     ornament

Correctness - {Greek "hellenismos"; Latin "latinitas"; also translated 'purity'}
                     - use of words that are current and adhere to grammatical rules
Clarity - {Greek "sapheneia"; Latin "lucere" (to shine) and "perspicere" (to see through)}
            - circumlocution ~ avoiding clarity, in most cases to be polite {Greek "periphrasis" (speaking around)}
            - clarity can also be obscured by the use of obsolete, technical, new, or colloquial words
Appropriateness - {Greek "to prepon" (to say or do whatever is fitting in a given situation)}
                             - when a rhetor supplements an awareness of the audience with "a knowledge of the times for speaking and for keeping silence, and has also distinguished the favorable occasions for brief speech or pitiful speech or intensity and all the classes of speech which he has learned, then, and not till then, will his art be fully and completely finished." ~ Plato
                             - hyperbole - exaggeration of a case
                             - 3 general levels of style: grand
                                                                    middle
                                                                    plain
                             - rhetorical questions
                             - antistrophe - "turning about"; repetition of the same or similar words in successive clauses
                            - isocolon - balanced clauses
                            - apostrophe - "turning away"
                            - loose vs. periodic sentences = straightforward narrative vs. roundabout
Ornament - 3 categories:
                figures of speech {Latin "figurae verborum"}
               figures of thought {Latin "figurae sententiarum"}
               tropes {Greek "tropi" (turn)}
                 - figure - any form of expression in which "we give our language a conformation other than the obvious and ordinary"
               - trope - substitution of one word or phrase for another

Sentence Composition
period {Greek "periodos" (a way around)}
colon {Latin "membrum" (part; limb)} - any expression rhythmically complete but meaningless if detached from the rest of the sentence
comma {Latin "articulus" (part joined on)} - any set of words set apart by pauses
Four types of sentences: Period (simplest)
                                     Compound
                                     Complex
                                     Compound-complex

Paratactic and Periodic Styles
Paratactic {Greek "parataxis" (placed alongside)}
                  - "running" / "strung on" / "continuous"
                  - having "no natural stopping places"
                  - "comes to a stop only because there is no more to say of that subject"
Periodic - "a portion of speech that has in itself a beginning and end, being at the same time not too big to be taken in at a glance."

Figurative Language
 - Figures that interrupt natural word order -
{Latin "interposito"; Greek "parenthesis" (a statement alongside another)}
hyperbaton - "a sudden turn"
apposito - "putting off from" = apposition
metabasis - a summarizing transition
asyndeton -  no connectors (between colons)
polysendeton - many connectors (between colons)
- Figures of repetition - 
synonymy - "the same name"
puns - "attract the ear of the audience and excite their attention by some resemblance, equality, or contrast of words"
antanaclasis - "bending back" - using a word in two different senses
homoioteleuton - "same ending" - repetition of words with similar endings
anaphora/epanaphora - repetition of words at the beginning of phrases
epiphora - repetition of the last word in successive phrases
chiasmus - "arranged crosswise" - "Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country."
antimetabole - "thrown over against" - "When the going gets tough, the tough get going"


               

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