“The most excellent ornament exornations , lights, flowers, and forms of speech, commonly called the figures of rhetoric. By which the singular parts of man’s mind, are most aptly expressed, and the sundry affections of his heart most effectually uttered.” (Henry Peacham, The Garden of Eloquence, 1593) A figure of speech is the use of…
William Shakespeare explores the fundamental concepts of modern psychology in his plays. In one of his longest plays, Hamlet, he not only utilizes characters and time to portray the beliefs of the late 16th century but to additionally examine basic principles and interactions of humans. The psychoanalytical notion that children have a repressed desire to…
OPEN WITH AN INTRODUCTORY SERIES OF APPOSITIVES, THEN A DASH AND A SUMMARIZING SUBJECT This pattern begins with a cluster of appositives. An appositive we may define as another naming for some noun. After the appositive comes a dash, followed by a summarizing word. These summarizing words may be: such, all those, these, these many,…
In 1512, the Dutch humanist Desiderius Erasmus (1466-1536) published De Copia (meaning “on command of language” or “richness of expression”). Erasmus’s book was one of the most influential rhetoric texts of the European Renaissance. One exercise in De Copia directs students to compose several hundred variations of one sentence. This exercise has three purposes: (1) …
Parallelism is the repetition of a grammatical structure to emphasize a relationship between ideas. Parallelism gives balance, focus, and clarity to a sentence. Parallelism establishes a pattern of repetition that writers can manipulate to create a vast array of rhetorical effects. Examples: Writers can reinforce and emphasize their use of parallelism by repeating one or…
USE A PERIODIC SENTENCE In a periodic sentence, descriptive elements (or details) introduce the sentence, pushing the complete thought to the end of the sentence. This pattern proves quite effective for emphasis or suspense because the most emphatic point of a sentence is the end. Periodic sentences are usually long, complex sentences, the independent clause…
WRITE A COMPOUND SENTENCE USING A COMMA BEFORE THE COORDINATING CONJUNCTION (FOR, AND, NOR, BUT, OR, YET, SO) EXAMPLES 1. Arthur likes music, but Chris has a tin ear. 2. One must humor him, or he will have a tantrum. 3. I won’t go to the dance, nor will I buy a ticket. 4. I…
OPEN WITH A NOUN CLAUSE A noun clause may act as the subject of a sentence, the object of a verb, the predicate noun, or the object of a preposition. Subject: Whatever you say will meet with my approval. The object of a verb: The students know what they want to be discussed. Predicate noun:…
USE AN ESSENTIAL (RESTRICTIVE) ADJECTIVE A subordinate clause = a group of words with a subject and predicate, but dependent on the rest of the sentence to make sense. Essential (restrictive) = necessary or essential to meaning. An adjective = a word that modifies a noun or pronoun. An essential (restrictive) adjective clause = a…
OPEN WITH A PERFECT INFINITIVE The present infinitive to have + the third principal part of the verb (or its past participle) = the perfect infinitive (to have written). Perfect infinitives form phrases in the same three ways as the present infinitive: by combining with adverbs: To have talked more loudly, I would have needed…
OPEN WITH AN ADJECTIVE An adjective describes or points out a noun or pronoun. It tells what kind, what color, what number, which one, whose. Adjectives allow distinguishing and specification. They add descriptive details. They also limit or make more definite the meaning of a keyword. Typically, adjectives immediately precede the words they modify; however,…
Parallel structure places words, phrases, clauses, and sentences in a series of the same grammatical elements. Creating parallel constructions shows the reader that two or more things relate to each other with equal importance. Think of railroad tracks, which run parallel to one another. If one track bends along the line, a train goes off…
WRITE A SENTENCE IN WHICH THE VERB PRECEDES THE SUBJECT (ANASTROPHE) Placing the verb before the subject in a sentence is also known as a form of “anastrophe,” the inversion of the natural word order (subject-verb-object) which dominates the English language. The following sentences open with adverbs or prepositional phrases. Notice that the verb precedes…
OPEN WITH AN INFINITIVE Verbals make sentences more active. The English language has three verbals: 1. infinitives 2. participles 3. gerunds. Verbals are half-verb, half another part of speech. Verbals look like verbs, but they function as another part of speech. Verbals are half-verb, half another part of speech. Verbals may function as 1. nouns…
USE STRONG ACTIVE VERBS Strong active verbs bring life and description to your paper by more accurately identifying an action and by adding emphases, connotations, or by merely making a common phrase stand out. EXAMPLES 1. The tragic accident devastated the entire family. 2. The recorder intercepted many of the secret messages. 3. The author…
Shaping identity is at the core of almost every individual being. Identity defines you as well as separates and shapes each individual giving them the qualities that make them unique in a vast pool of sameness. Generally, people have an undying will to characterize themselves and will go to great lengths to achieve a sense…
Shakespeare’s plays, Hamlet (1603) and A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1600), explore the theme of conflict and its repercussions, each play highlighting different aspects of the theme due to differences in genre and subject. Conflict, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, is “a serious disagreement or argument, typically a protracted one”, and would therefore seem to…
The character of Lucy Westerna is created by multiple narrations in the novel. The character of Lucy is first introduced through Mina who is Lucy’s friend, Lucy Westenra, exchange letters about their respective romances. The dominant characteristic of the character emerges through Mina that she is a vivacious young woman who is much praised for…
Colley Cibber was a comic actor and playwright with pretensions to tragedy (Colley 17-18). In 1700, he wrote and performed in an altered and slightly abridged version of Shakespeare’s Richard III, which was initially unsuccessful (probably because of overzealous government censorship) (Ashley 52). However, it soon became popular enough to eclipse the Shakespearean original on…
In “Fig Leaves and Falsehoods,” Janet E. Smith argues against the consensus view of Catholic moralists who, following Aquinas, regard all deceptive speech as morally wrong. She maintains that Aquinas’s view depends on an overly limited view of the purpose of speech, a view based on a prelapsarian order of things and neglectful of the…