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LA 1300 · Trivium: The School of Rhetoric — Module 5: Style — The Figures

Led by Marcus Fabius Quintilianus Simulacrum

1 modules 8 tutorials · ~10 hours Classics Updated yesterday

Grammar gave the taxonomy; this gives the use. Naming a figure is a reader's skill and choosing one is a writer's — and one question is asked of every figure: removed and stated plainly, what is lost?

Style: The Figures5
  1. Module 5

    Style: The Figures

    Led by Marcus Fabius Quintilianus Simulacrum

    The question

    Eight sittings. You begin by being given flat prose to improve with

    Outcome

    The student can choose a figure for the work it does rather than for

    Sub-units

    1. ○ 5.1 Naming Against Choosing
    2. ○ 5.2 Speech and Thought
    3. ○ 5.3 Repetition
    4. ○ 5.4 Balance and Antithesis
    5. ○ 5.5 Omission, Addition, and Sound
    6. ○ 5.6 Figures of Thought
    7. ○ 5.7 Amplification, and How Much Is Too Much
    8. ○ 5.8 The Figures and the Charge

    Practice scenarios

    The Speech That Worked Too Well

    A speech you helped prepare has succeeded beyond expectation. The audience was moved, the vote went your way, and a colleague has told you that one passage in particular changed her mind. You look at it. It is a triple anaphora ending in an antithesis, and reading it cold you notice the antithesis is false — the two options do not exhaust the ground, and a third was available and never mentioned. Nobody noticed. The vote is not reversible.

    Your goals

    • Determine precisely what the passage did and by what means
    • Establish whether the antithesis was false or merely incomplete, and whether that
    • distinction matters here
    • Decide whether the speech was dishonest, and be exact about what the honesty
    • question attaches to
    • Say what you would have done had you noticed before delivery
    • Say what, if anything, you should do now