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From: GMP@psuvm.BITNET
Newsgroups: net.nlang
Subject: Re: Rhetorical Device Query
Message-ID: <2133GMP@psuvm>
Date: Thu, 22-Aug-85 21:39:16 EDT
Article-I.D.: psuvm.2133GMP
Posted: Thu Aug 22 21:39:16 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 25-Aug-85 02:37:13 EDT
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In a book I wrote some years ago, I found it necessary to put together a list o
f "rhetorical devices."  Working from A SYSTEM OF FIGURES AND TROPES which date
s to the seventeenth century, Henry Peacham lists what he calls the authori-
tative list of literary figures and tropes used in the rhetorical works, mostly
by Cicero.  Risking providing more information than anyone cares to have
     
Alliteration   onomatopoeia    synechdoche   allegory  metonymy
autonomasia   hyperbole  sarcasm  catachresis  ecphonesis  epanorthosis
aposiopesis  apophasis (made famous by Richard Nixon)
anacoenosis  anastrophe  erotesis  epanaphora  apostrophe periphrasis
euphemism  eupuism  synchoresis  asyndeton  oxymoron  enanctiosis  hypotyposis
prosopopoeia  parabole  epiphonema
     
Cicero in De Inventione noted that he often found it necessary to return a
phrase to its original meaning.  Cartagena delenda est thus became a direct
reference to a military attack each time he used the word, although the phrase
had taken on the meaning of a routine exhortation to the impossible.  Aristotle
did a great deal with the commonplace, best exemplified in the title ^
"Who s afraid of Virginia Woolf?" which takes on the context of juxtaposition
of petty human mind with the great literature of history, but in the final
act refers to its direct meaning as a commonplace, literally, fear of the
destruction of the illusion.
    We could go on with this, but if anyone is really interested, drop me a
line and I will send you xerox copies of some pages hardly anyone read, on
which I made hardly a dime, but which do rejuvenate some of the classic wisdom
of those who did their literary work without wordprocessors.
    ILLEGITIMI NON CARBORUNDUM
INQUIRIES TO GMP, 225 SPARKS, PSU, UNIVERSITY PARK, PA 16802
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