Classical Rhetoric for the Modern Student
I am finding it fascinating. I am especially fascinated with chapter IV on Style. It is here we find the figures of speech, schemes and tropes. All the fun stuff. Corbett quotes Sister Miriam Joseph in claiming that the Tudor's recognized more than 200 figures of speech. How many can you think of or name? Were the Tudor rhetoricians truly a bombastic, pedantic set of affected snobs? You can hardly name an obscure figure of speech that Shakespeare did not use or maybe even invent.
Is there some clue in all of this as to why Shakespeare is not enjoyed anymore? I find myself wondering if schemes and tropes are only as useful as the understanding of the audience. Or maybe I could put it this way: If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around does it make a sound? With writing we always have the hope that the tree will fall over and over again until someone hears it. Schemes and tropes, I submit, are not a sign of affectation but rather a sign that there is a love of language going on. When that love dies the figures that express it die also.
When all that is left of writing is purely technical and practical, then I believe we will truly be barbarians. Then this: "When I consider how my light is spent, ere half my days in this dark and wide," becomes: Milton was a blind poet.
The problem, these days,with figures of speech is that we aren't bringing anything to the table. We say 'maddening crowd' because we don't have a clue what a 'madding crowd' is. The deficit of the figures is not with the writers but with the readers. We don't get metaphor because we don't have imaginations. We are literal but not literary.
WWI brought about the end of many things; some say it was the death of the West. The saddest loss of all,though,was the end of the warrior poets. Yeats was right,"The falcon cannot hear the falconer."
4 comments:
I noticed that Richard Weaver is listed in the Index. What does Corbett say about him?
Cindy,
Luke and I are working through Aristotle's Rhetoric using MP's study guide this year. One of the things we do each week is define figures of speech. I bought a little book called "Figures of Speech" and I am enjoying finally knowing the names of many of the verbal constructs I've seen over the years.
Have you read Sister Miriam Joseph's "Shakespeare's Use of the Arts of Language" yet? It's been on my "to be read" pile for a couple of years but I have to finish Corbett first. :)
I agree that the trouble starts with the readers. We read so much twaddle and don't immerse ourselves and luxuriate in words any more. We think action better than words and yet wasn't Benjamin Franklin the one who said that the pen is mightier than the sword. These days, the sword tends to be the modus operandi for everyone or else we are told that we have to be practical. I'm beginning to hate the word "practical". Where is the beauty and the truth and the virtue and the graciousness that used to be a part of every day living? I love listening to and reading things from the Circe Institute because they see the need to reclaim those things and make them a part of our lives again.
Thanks for letting me rant a bit. I love your blog. You always say the things that are chasing around in my head which I haven't quite formed into complete thoughts and sentences.
Joy (VA)
The deficit of the figures is not with the writers but with the readers. We don't get metaphor because we don't have imaginations. We are literal but not literary.
This is true, Cindy. I am frquently faced with my own deficiencies when I dare to pick up a book written before the death of imagination. Of course, though it takes me a while, I am able to go where the writer is taking me. Too many people give up.
When I hear that fewer and fewer people are "reading for pleasure", I wonder at what is meant by that statement. Does it mean that for it to be pleasurable it must be easy, or require no mental effort on the part of the reader?
I know I have probably strayed off topic. But as usual, you've made me think. And that's a good thing since serious thought also seems to have gone the way of the literary and the imaginative.
And therefore the deficit is with the teachers of reading, especially in the pre-K to 2 years.
Children need adults to read magnificent, musical, wonder-filled texts to them. Those texts, because they grope to express wonder, are compelled to use schemes and tropes to get it said.
It's not affectation when it arises from the necessity to communicate a marvel. But when the falcon cannot hear the falconer there are no more marvels.
Read and memorize great lit with preschool children. Don't stop when they begin to decode. Then get them reading wonderful, imaginative literature as early as possible. And teach them formal grammar as early as possible so you can teach them the schemes that depend on them when they want to hear about them.
That's my little diatribe.
We are all being remediated.
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