211224 What I learned in my studies this morning 2

O, Rhetoric! You

Art of Elegance and Style. 

A bit of panache! 

 
Daily Stoic:

I am temporary.  Foodstuffs feasted and beer binged, videos viewed and art appreciated, lyrics listened and trips taken, and everything inside my mind, fresh or memorial . . . these things I experience die with me. 

I've heard sublime music and seen rare and beautiful art, marveled at the veil portrayed in marble and the emotion captured in a photo or a painting. I've tasted food that can only be described as holy and drunk potions as magical a flavor as has ever been crafted. 

If this temptation passes by, that's ok.  I am satisfied without it. 

Today's Meditation:

Today's Meditation II:

Daily Shakespeare:

Love's Labours Lost | Act 1, Scene 1

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From Ward Farnsworth, Classical English Rhetoric, Chapter 2. Structural Matters:

10. Using Extra Conjunctions: POLYSYNDETON (pp. 128-146 )

Technical term: 

POLYSYNDETON (po-ly-sin-de-tahn) is the repeated use of conjunctions. It can serve several useful ends.

a. Creating a rhythm and cadence where one would not otherwise exist 

b. Adding a sense of pace, urgency or ease, as the context warrants 

c. Crafting an air of artlessness for the speaker, as if they are making it up as the go along (and and and...) 

d. Giving an otherwise ordinary list a sense of importance in each and every item, as if they are worth more than merely being an item in a list

e. Emphasizing the length of a list

f. Building loose sentences which allow opportunities for surprise and invention

Patterns and Examples 

— To emphasize each term

——Nouns

——Actions 

——Modifiers 

— Narration 

— Completeness 

— Numerosity

— Ad Nauseum

— To start sentences 

—— Biblical

—— Excitability 

—— A flow of events 

— Loose sentences ("...one that can be stopped at various points with no grammatical trouble but that keeps going.")

— Stringed alternatives

— Paired items

— Possible explanations in series

— To emphasize and heighten insults

— A parade of horribles

— In combination with other rhetorical tools 

—— With anaphora (repetition at the beginning of successive clauses) 

—— With epistrophe (repetition at the end) or symploce (interweaving of similar words at the beginning and end) 

—— With isocolon (repetition of the same number of words or syllables) 

Conclusion:

And then you make a list and then you make the list remarkable in some way and then you make run-on dependent clauses!

Polysyndeton is, for me, one of the harder rhetorical devices to use. It is difficult to hit the right tone and timbre to pull it off.

Using polysyndeton is easy. Using it well is quite difficult.