Rhetorical Devices, Apuntes de Literatura Americana

¡Descarga Rhetorical Devices y más Apuntes en PDF de Literatura Americana solo en Docsity! Rhetorical Devices Style is part of classical rhetoric and a number of rhetorical devices are worth considering in any analysis of style. For the analysis of literature a knowledge of rhetorical devices is indispensable, since there is often a considerable density of rhetorical figures and tropes which are important generators and qualifiers of meaning and effect. This is particularly the case in poetry. Especially the analysis of the use of imagery is important for any kind of literary text. (For further details see Analysing a Metaphor and Symbol). Figures of speech in classical rhetoric were defined as “a form of speech artfully varied from common usage” (Quintilian, Inst. Orat. IX.i.2). The forms of figurative languages are divided into two main groups: schemes (or figures) and tropes. Rhetorical schemes describe the arrangement of individual sounds (phonological schemes), the arrangement of words (morphological schemes), and sentence structure (syntactical schemes). Rhetorical tropes are devices of figurative language. They represent a deviation from the common or main significance of a word or phrase (semantic figures) or include specific appeals to the audience (pragmatic figures). The following definitions are mainly based on: Abrams 1988, Corbett 1971, Holman/Harmon 1992, Preminger 1993, Jahn 2002 Link, Scaif 2002 Link. Schemes: Phoneme-level (level of individual sounds) alliteration the same sound is repeated at the beginning of several words or in stressed syllables of words that are in close proximity • Firefrorefiddle, the Fiend of the Fell (T.S. Eliot, Book of Practical Cats) • Moping melancholy mad (Housman, Terence, This Is Stupid Stuff) • Dombey and Son had often dealt in hides but not in hearts. They left that fancy war to boys and girls, and boarding-schools and books. (Dickens, Dombey and Son) assonance the same or similar vowel sounds are repeated in the stressed syllables of words that are in close proximity while the consonants differ • Breathing like one that hath a weary dream (Tennyson, The Lotos-Eaters) • Gun, drum, trumpet, blunderbuss and thunder (Pope, Imitations of Horace) consonance two or more consonants are repeated, but the adjacent vowels differ • Friend/frowned • killed/cold, • horse/hearse onomatopoei a the sound of the word imitates the sound of the thing which that word denotes • clatter, bash, bang, rumble, sniff, howl, etc. • […] aspens quiver Little breezes dusk and shiver (Tennyson, Lady of Shalott - imitates the sound of the breeze in the leaves) • Hear the loud alarum bells – Brazen bells! What a tale of terror, now, their turbulency tells! [...] How they clang, and clash and roar! (Poe, The Bells) Schemes: Word-level anadiplosis / reduplicatio (Greek for “doubling back”) the word or phrase that concludes one line or clause is repeated at the beginning of the next • A wreathed garland of deserved praise, Of praise deserved, unto thee I give, I give to thee, who knowest all my ways, My crooked winding ways, wherin I live. (Herbert, A Wreath) • [...] if you have a lot of things you cannot move about a lot, [...] furniture requires dusting, dusters require servants, servants require insurance stamps [...]. (E.M. Forster, My Wood) anaphora a word or phrase is repeated at the beginning of successive phrases, clauses or lines • Because I do not hope to turn again Because I do not hope Because I do not hope to turn. (T.S. Eliot, Ash- Wednesday) • So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, So long lives this and this gives life to thee. (Shakespeare, Sonnet 18) climax / gradatio (Greek for “ladder”) arrangement of words, phrases, or clauses in an order of ascending power • Some men are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them. (Shakespeare, Twelfth Night) epistrophe a word or expression is repeated at the end of successive phrases, clauses or lines • There chiefly I sought thee, there only I found thee; Her glance was the best of the rays that surround thee. (Byron, Stanzas Written on the Road between Florence and Pisa) • We cannot learn from one another until we stop been built under Edward the Sixth, had offered a night’s hospitality to the great Elizabeth (whose august person had extended itself upon a huge, magnificent and terribly angular bed which still formed the principal honour of the sleeping apartments), had been a good deal bruised and defaced in Cromwell’s wars, and then, under the Restoration, repaired and much enlarged; and how, finally, after having been remodeled and disfigured in the eighteenth century, it had passed into the careful keeping of a shrewd American banker, who had bought it originally because (owing to circumstances too complicated to set forth) it was offered at a great bargain; bought it with much grumbling at its ugliness, its antiquity, its incommodity, and who now, at the end of twenty years, had become conscious of a real aesthetic passion for it, so that he knew all its points and would tell you just where to stand to see them in combination and just the hour when the shadows of its various protuberances – which fell so softly upon the warm, weary brickwork – were of the right measure. (James, Portrait of a Lady) inversion the usual word order is rearranged, often for the effect of emphasis or to maintain the meter (a type of hyperbaton) • Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines, And often is his gold complexion dimmed (Shakespeare, Sonnet 18) (instead of: Sometime the eye of heaven shines too hot and his gold complexion is often dimmed) parallelism the repetition of identical or similar syntactic elements (word, phrase, clause) • Women represent the triumph of matter over mind, just as men represent the triumph of mind over morals. (Wilde, Picture of Dorian Gray) • Though the heart be still as loving And the moon be still as bright (Byron, So We'll Go no More A-Roving) • Dombey was about eight-and-forty years of age. Son about eight-and-forty minutes. Dombey was rather bald, rather red, and though a handsome well-made man, too stern and pompous in appearance, to be prepossessing. Son was very bald, and very red, and though (of course) an undeniably fine infant, somewhat crushed and spotty in his general effect, as yet. (Dickens, Dombey and Son) parataxis clauses or sentences are arranged in a series without subordination, usually shorter sentence constructions (opposite of hypotaxis) • My hot water bottle was red, Manchester United’s colour. Sinbad’s was green. I loved the smell off the bottle. I put hot water in it and emptied it and smelled it. I put my nose to the hole, nearly in it. (Doyle, Paddy Clarke) polysyndeton the unusual repetition of the same conjunction (opposite of asyndeton) • It is a land with neither night nor day, Nor heat nor cold, nor any wind, nor rain, Nor hills nor valleys. (Ch. Rossetti, Cobwebs) • Match’d with an aged wife, I mete and dole Unequal laws unto a savage race, That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me. (Tennyson, Ulysses) redditio / kyklos / framing a syntactic unit or verse line is framed by the same element at the beginning and at the end • Haste still pays haste, and leisure answers leisure; Like doth quit like, and Measure still for Measure. (Shakespeare, Measure for Measure) • Vanity, saith the preacher, vanity! (Browning, The Bishop Orders his Tomb) zeugma (Greek for “yoking”) one verb controls two or more objects that have different syntactic and semantic relations to it • Harriet had broken all her old ties and half the commandments [...] (Dorothy Sayers, Gaudy Night) • Or stain her honour or her new brocade. Forget her prayers or miss a masquerade, Or lose her heart, or necklace, at a ball (Pope, Rape of the Lock) Tropes antithesis opposition, or contrast of ideas or words in a parallel construction • Human life is everywhere a state in which much is to be endured, and little to be enjoyed. (Samuel Johnson) • Not that I loved Caesar less, but that I loved Rome more. (Shakespeare, Julius Caesar) apostrophe addressing an absent person, a god or a personified abstraction • Judge, O you gods, how dearly Caesar loved him. (Shakespeare, Julius Caesar) euphemism substitution of an agreeable or at least non-offensive expression for one whose plainer meaning might be harsh or unpleasant • […] one particular lady, whose lord is more than suspected of laying his umbrella on her as an instrument of correction, [...] (Dickens, Bleak House) hyperbole obvious exaggeration for emphasis or for rhetorical effect • […] he couldn’t, however sanguine his disposition, hope to offer a remark that would be a greater outrage on human nature in general […] (Mrs Chick’s response to her husband’s suggestion that the starving baby should be fed with the teapot since there was no nurse. Dickens, Dombey and Son) irony expression of something which is contrary to the intended meaning; the words say one thing but mean another • ‘Well!’ said Mrs Chick, with a sweet smile, ‘after this, I forgive Fanny everything!’ It was a declaration in a Christian spirit, and Mrs Chick felt that it did her good. Not that she had anything particular to forgive in her sister-in- law, not indeed anything at all, except her having married her brother – in itself a species of audacity – and her having, in the course of events, given birth to a girl instead of a boy […]. (Dickens, Dombey and Son) • In addition [...] you are liable to get tide- trapped away in the swamps, [...] Of course if you really want a truly safe investment in Fame, and really care about Posterity, and Posterity's Science, you will jump over into the black batter-like, stinking slime cheered by the thought of the terrific sensation you will produce in 20,000 years hence, and the care you will be taken of then by your fellow- creatures, in a museum (Mary Kingsley, Travels in West Africa) metaphor a figure of similarity, a word or phrase is replaced by an expression denoting an analogous circumstance in a different semantic field. The comparison adds a new dimension of meaning to the original expression. Unlike in simile, the comparison is not made explicit ( ‘like’ or ‘as’ are not used, see the longer discussion in Analysing a Metaphor) • The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together. (Shakespeare, All's Well that Ends Well)