English rhetoric

Front matter

Book W5 ..&&

Copyright - . j

(J Q

Preface

given to the book the test of class use; to colleagues of the University faculty, notably Dean Howard L. Hodgkins, Professor Hermann Schoenfeld, Dean Charles E. Munroe, and Professor George N. Henning, for kindly interest and suggestion; and especially to Professor James Howard Gore, to the late Professor Williston S. Hough, and to Assistant Professor De Witt C. Croissant, now of the University of Kansas, for important and helpful criticism; to Mr. George H. Judd also, whose encouragement, from the earliest printing of sections of this book, helped to bring it to completion.

Wiluam Aeeen Wiebur.

Washington, January, 1915.

Chapter I. The Subject

Definition, i ; Personality, I ; The Motive, 2 ; Style, 3; The Fine Art of Rhetoric, 4; The Problem, 4; The Primary Modes of Style, 7; The Secondary Modes of Style, 9; The Elements of Composition, 11 ; The Composition, 11; The Paragraph, 13; The Sentence, 14; The Word, 15; The Syllable, 17; The Making of a Writer, 19.

Chapter II. Prose

The Literal Mode, 25; Standard Prose, 26; The Colloquial Standard, 27; The Literary Standard, 29; The Oratorical Standard, 30; The Intellectual Type, 33; The Impassioned Type, 34; The Imaginative Type, 35; Freedom under Law, 37.

Chapter III. Poetry

The Genesis of Poetry, 39; Beauty, 40; The Poet, 42 ; The Language of Poetry, 47 ; Figures of Speech, 48; The Correlative Figures, 50; The Subject-Figures, 51; The Image-Figures, 56; Figurative Quality, 59; Metre, 61; Metrical Elements, 63; Types of Poetry, 66; The Epic Type, 67; The Lyric Type, 68; The Dramatic Type, 70; The Gleam, 71.

Chapter IV

Narration, 72; Elements of Narrative Interest, 74; Plot Analysis, 76; Plot Synthesis, 78; Plot Emphasis, 80; Primary Stress, 81; Secondary Stress, 86; Tone, 94; Character Treatment, 95; Characteristics, 96; Thought-Interest, 100; Elements and Qualities of Style, 103; Theory of the Short Story, 107; The Novel, 109.

Chapter V. Description

Description, 112; Vision, 113; Point of View, 115; Selection, 116; Things as They Are, 120.

Pages

1-24

25-38

39-71

(vii)

Contents.

viii

Chapter VI

Things That Are Not Seen, 121 ; Abstract Thinking, 123; Discipline, 125; Types of Exposition, 131; Substantive Exposition, 132; Adjective Exposition, 138; Organic Thinking, 143; The Text-Book, 144; The Monograph, 144; The Treatise, 146; The Essay, 148; The Thinkers, 149.

Chapter VII. Argumentation

The Other-Self, 151 ; Phenomena of Consciousness, 152; Kinds of Argumentation, 157; Letter- Writing, 158; Journalism, 162; Conversation, 171 ; Teaching, 180; Oratory, 186; The Assembly, 186; The Court of Law, 190; The Debate, 190; The Pulpit, 192; The Special Occasion, 195; Eloquence, 196.

Chapter I. The Subject

1. Definition . — R hetori c is self-expression through language. It gives effectiveness^ to "discourse by infusing into it personal quality. The method of rhetorical composition adapts language to all the other factors involved — the Self, the Other- Self, the thought, the occasion. Yet adaptation alone is not rhetoric, for language may be in complete adjustment, adapted in all of its relations, and yet be ineffective like a wire circuit without the electric spark. The living. power in words , is .the power of personality. The Self finding adequate expression through a circuit of words — this ;s Rhetoric.

What rhetoric essentially is may be studied in its effects. Such an effect is described by Tennyson :

“But when he spake and cheer’d his Table Round,

With large, divine, and comfortable words,

Beyond my tongue to tell thee — I beheld From eye to eye thro’ all their Order flash A momentary likeness of the King.” 1

2. Personality. — The Self is a person whose characteristic quality is personality. A person is an embodied spirit whose characteristic quality is spirituality. The Self is experienced in consciousness as the substantive reality behind the phenomena of consciousness. S piritu ality is the essential elemental quality of the Self. Personality is the characteristic quality of the embodied Self, and the personal quality that distinguishes one person from another is individuality.

The Buddhist philosopher minimizes personality, regarding individuality as a fading condition to be lost at last in the All- Soul — not distinguishable from annihilation.

The Christian philosopher emphasizes personality, regarding it as progressively crystallizing into perfect individuality, finding in the scientific doctrine of evolution a striking analogy to spiritual development. Spencer states the formula of evolution thus :

“Evolution is an integration of matter, and concomitant dissipation of motion, during which the matter passes from an indefinite, incoherent

1 Alfred Tennyson (1809-1892), “Idylls of the King”: “The Coming of Arthur,” 266-270.

homogeneity to a definite, coherent heterogeneity; and during which the retained motion undergoes a parallel transformation” 2

So personality acquires distinguishing, permanent characteristics.

The general Christian conception of the final state of blessedness is the attainment of perfection and the power of perfect expression. Spiritual evolution is the unfolding of personality under the solicitations of external influences. Expression is as natural for personality as the fragrance of flowering fields in answer to sunshine and rain.

Mental attitude towards the fact of personality conditions the motive of expression. A belief that personality is fading is an influence tending to apathy and quiescence like that of the old East. A belief in the crystallizing of personality into perfect individuality is followed by individual personal activity of expression.

3. The Motive. — The impulse that . leads to self-expression is innate. It is the evidence in our nature of the Divine commission to subdue the earth and possess it. The naturalness of expression is suggested in the heart-beats that are life-pulses throughout our physical organism, in the five senses that are the outward gates to the world, and in the prattle of the child unconsciously exercising the organs of speech for the language he is soon to learn.

The motive rises into consciousness in a burden of uneasiness and unrest that is lightened only by expression. This is described by Edmund Spenser, speaking through his shepherd

poet:

But, pyping lowe in shade of lowly grove,

I play to please myself e, all be it ill.

Nought weigh I who my song doth prayse or blame,

Ne strive to winne renowne, or passe the rest:

* * * * * * * *

The fytter they my carefull case to frame:

Enough is me to paint out my unrest.” 3

Wordsworth described the motive as a tempest, a redundant energy, vexing its own creation:

“For I, methought, while the sweet breath of heaven Was blowing on my body, felt within A correspondent breeze, that gently moved With quickening virtue, but is now become A tempest, a redundant energy,

Vexing its own creation” 4

Herbert Spencer (1820-1903), “First Principles,” sec. 145.

* Edmund Spenser (1552-1599), “The Shepheards Calendar”— “June.” 4 William Wordsworth (1770-1850), “The Prelude,” 1, 33-38.

The soul is facing outwards. Stevenson’s 5 “Will o’ the Mill” is a parable that says all that can be said for inaction, and it is a tragedy. Stevenson himself believed, “Acts may be forgiven : not even God can forgive the hanger-back.” Life is to be practical and expressive, and in every avenue of expression the interpreter is language.

4. Style. — “Le style est de Vhomme meme ,” 6 is the most famous saying about style. Style is of the man himself ; his style is his manner. The writer’s mariner is as characteristic as his signature ; as he acquires control of the medium of expression he develops a grace of naturalness so individual that he may be recognized by it. We say in idiomatic phrase, “he expresses himself well,” and we call the style by his name — “Miltonic,” or “Shakespearian.” If you would know yourself, write; if you would know your neighbor, read what he has written. If a man leaves the impress of his individuality upon any object of daily use, surely this will be true of the language through which he expresses himself ; style transcribes personality. Taine 7 studied English literature not with a literary but with a philosophical motive, to learn the characteristics of the English people.

Ben Jonson wrote of the personal expressiveness of language : ^ '

most shows a man: speak, that I may' see thee. It springs out of the most retired and inmost parts of us, and is the image of the parent of it, the mind. No glass renders a man’s form or likeness so true as his speech. Nay, it is likened to a man; and as we consider feature and composition in a man, so words in language; in the greatness, aptness, sound structure, and harmony of it.” 8

This gives human interest to style. Theme-work is style in the making, and it is dry and uninteresting only so far as it fails to be rhetorical. Literature has this essential human interest, —

“All houses wherein men have lived and died Are haunted houses.” 9

5 Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894). See Balfour’s “Life of Robert Louis Stevenson,” vol. 1, p. 191.

6 Georges Louis Leclerc Buffon (1707-1788), “Discours sur le style ” in 1753 before the French Academy.

T Hippolyte Adolphe Taine (1828-1893), “History of English Literature.”

8 Ben Jonson (1573-1637), “Timber; or, Discoveries Made Upon Men and Matter.”

8 Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882), “Haunted Houses.”

5. The Fine Art of Rhetoric.— The employment of language for the purpose of expression is an art, and when such expression becomes self-expression, having spiritual quality and individual personal distinctiveness, the art becomes fine art, and the mode is Rhetoric.

The fine arts seek self-expression through beautiful modes — as in architecture and painting— spiritualizing the medium of expression with grace and beauty. We naturally feel that every person normally endowed must have within his reach a mode of self-expression in the mastery of which he may expect to become an artist. And we find such a universal mode in rhetoric. From forgotten, half-conscious years we have used language; personal associations have made it for each of us a marvelous fabric wrought like a tapestry with our own dreams and memories. And each may hope to gain artistic mastery of this mode of expression which he cherishes as his mother-tongue.

An ^nglish-speaking person learns a foreign language through the phases of vocabulary, grammar, and idiom. A considerable part of his study is an apprenticeship to these things. But with English, his mother-tongue, it is different; all of the elementary things he should have known from his youth up. In the more advanced study of English he is face to face with the problem of self-expression. This is not essentially different from the art of sculpture, painting, architecture or music. The art of self-expression through language is akin to all of them. The technic of the art always concerns itself with syllables, words, sentences, and paragraphs, and with all of the relations of these elements, but the technic is recognized as a means to an end, and that end a high and worthy one. It is self-expression.

The stars in their courses fight for him who uses his mother-tongue : laws of association bring infinite suggestion ; laws of use bring naturalness and freedom. The mother-tongue is a medium of expression which loses itself in immediate influences ; the factors of expression have such intimate relation in the mother-tongue that the occasion marks the fellowship of the Self and the Other-Self in a personal interpretation of the thought. The felicitous language is the mother-tongue — the language of the heart and life through which the soul finds self-expression.

6. The Problem. — The factors in the problem of self-expression are the Self, the Other-Self, the thought, the occasion, and the word. Rhetorical expression is a composition of all these factors, and the neglect or misuse of any one of them essentially affects the composition. The comprehensiveness of Rhetoric is suggested by the nature of the factors, — the Self and the Other-Self involving psychology ; the thought, in its sequences, involving logic; the occasion, calling for fine sympathy and tact, involving ethics ; the word involving grammar. , __

A word is the' servant of all the other factors. It is used by the Self as a means of personal communication with the Other- Self under special conditions of time and place. The word reaches into the solitude of individuality and establishes a personal circuit of psychic influence. A rhetorical expression is not soliloquy, but discourse. It is not unrestrained effervescence of language, but language under the strictest law adapting means to ends. It is only in such subordination to law that personal influence breathes through it.

The problem is one of adaptation and organization and characterization. Adaptation gives the quality of clearness ; organization, through the quickening pervasiveness of personality, gives the quality of f orce; characterization, through the proper distribution of emphasis,' permits the truth to shine through the composition, the genial quality of which is beauty.

The problem of clearness is the adaptation of the word to the other factors. It is an intellective quality involving an exercise of judgment in elemental phases, — the adaptation of the word to the Self and the Other-Self, which is perspicuity; to the thought, which is precision ; and to the occasion, which is tact. The adequate understanding of the composition depends on perspicuity, precision, and tact. The standard of clearness was long ago set by Quintilian, “Non ut inteltegere possit, sed ne omnino possit non inteltegere , curandum .” 10 We must see to it, not that it is possible to know, but that it is not at all possible not to know.

The problem of force is how to impart personal energy to language so as to give it holding power. Force is the quality that holds, and personal energy alone can hold personality. The adequate enforcement of the composition demands that you be strong in saying the thing. If you really care about the thing you would give expression to, your own deep feeling will give it holding power. Language so inspired has a heart-beat like the surge of sound in a shell. Influences of the soul fill empty words with infinite, mystical charm ; they transform the mechanism into an organism. Force is the essential distinctive quality of rhetorical composition.

10 Marcus Fabius Quintilianus (about 35-95 A. D.), “Institutio Oratoria,” 8, 2.

The problem of beauty is emphasis. Rightly to distribute emphasis, placing proper word's in proper places with felicitous accent and cadence, is like giving a house many windows : the light that is within shines forth. Portia says :

“That light we see is burning in my hall:

How far that little candle throws his beams.

So shines a good deed in a naughty world.” u

When language is used so naturally that the language itself is forgotten in the beauty of the spirit that informs it, we have achieved the expression of beauty.

Clearness can exist without force or beauty. It is a quality of the thought, a mental product so impersonal and objective that language through mechanical perfection may be clear without being self-expressive. Hence language may express a thought clearly without being rhetorical.

Force is an emanation of the Self, and is therefore elemental. Because of its elemental character force can exist without clearness or beauty: there is forceful composition that is neither clear nor beautiful; some forceful poetry is not clear, and some forceful prose is not beautiful.

Beauty arises out of the relation of the Self and the thought; it is, therefore, not elemental, but compound. The quality of beauty can exist without clearness, for it is deeper than mech- . anism and not akin to it. It cannot exist without force, for force as personal energy is one of the elements of beauty ; yet language may be forceful without being beautiful. There is in the Self a transcendent affinity for truth. Beauty is a mode of spirituality arising in the relations of the Self to the thought, when perceptions of truth stir infinite forces and suffuse the thought with congenial influence. Beauty gives character to language. The diffusion of its quality is wonderful like chemic force. It is “no mortal business nor no sound that the earth owes” ; it is the wonder of Ariel’s Song wrought out on common words:

“Nothing of him that doth fade,

But doth suffer a sea-change Into something rich and strange.” 12

The emphasis that expresses beauty affects language in two ways: it uses only proper words, and it puts words only in proper places. It perfectly subordinates and controls the medium of expression. Ruskin says:

11 William Shakespeare (1564-1616), “The Merchant of Venice,” 5, 1, 89-91.

“The least appearance of extravagance, of the want of moderation and restraint is destructive of all beauty, giving rise to that which in color we call glaring, in form inelegant, in motion ungraceful, in language coarse, in thought undisciplined, in all unchastened. * * *

Over the doors of every school of art, I would have this one word, relieved out in deep letters of pure gold — Moderation.” 1 *

7. TJie P rimary Mode s of Style. — A mode is a form given to composition bysome controlling principle. There are two primary modes of style — prose and poetry.

There are two kinds of reality, matter and spirit — the ^ody and soul of the world. Rhetorical composition expresse' these two: the composition that expresses either of these separately is prose; the composition that expresses both of these togetlu r is poetry. The philosopher studies spiritual abstractions, and expresses these abstractions in prose. The scientist studies material things, and expresses these things in prose. The poet, through the creative faculty of the imagination, relates matte*, and spirit, and expresses this new creation in poetry.

The separation of matter and spirit in composition gives prose that ranges from the material levels of sense-perception to the heights of silence, where spirit is contemplated in abstraction.

The union of matter and spirit in composition gives essential poetry which has a wide range of effect from narration and description, stirring with the breath of spiritual influence, to poetry, shining above any light on sea or land with the brightness that binds two worlds together.

Prose is the product of the intellect, poetry the creation of the imagination.

In life and in literature phenomena of poetry appear before prose. Experience of deep influences, unreasoned but profoundly felt, precedes the conscious exercise of reason, and transcends it also. This explains the priority of poetry in child life, in primitive society, and in the youth of the world. The world’s oldest literature is poetry, and its permanence is explainable in the universality of a transcendent motive. Poetry rises into consciousness as an emotion, and is then shaped in forms of sensuousness by the imagination.

Shakespeare describes the process of the creation of poetry:

“The poet’s eye, in a fine frenzy rolling,

Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven; And as imagination bodies forth The forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing A local habitation and a name.

“John Ruskin (1819-1900), “Modern Painters,” 3, 1, 10.

Such tricks hath strong imagination,

That, if it would but apprehend some joy.

It comprehends some bringer of that joy.”

Milton says good poetry is “simple, sensuous and passionate .” 15 It is simple, for the affinity between matter and spirit gives an effect of great naturalness; it is sensuous, for the imagination gives to it a sensuous form — a local habitation and a nar >e; it is passionate, for it is apprehended as emotion and the heart gives it passionateness.

P ose d elops through analysis and abstraction. The poetic mode presenting spiritual things embodied in material forms is l ' . natural, because more in accord with our experience of the world. With the progress of thinking, the composite

id - of experience resolve themselves into elemental abstraction, and we become habituated to the processes of prose. Pr se composition develops only through strong intellectuality. Knowledge develops from a concrete thing through the abstract process of reasoning to another concrete thing. This is the prose mode, — a mode of pure reason.

The prime quality of prose is clearness. It is hard to think abstractly, and it is hard to follow abstract thinking. Prose composition should, therefore, utilize all the means of clearness. The medium of languag'e should be so clear as not to absorb mental energy. The word should be like plate glass so that we may see the thought without being conscious of the word. This principle is set forth by Spencer as follows :

“Regarding language as an apparatus of symbols for the conveyance of thought, we may say that, as in a mechanical apparatus, the more simple and the better arranged its parts the greater will be the effect produced. In either case, whatever force is absorbed by the machine is deducted from the result. A reader or listener has at each moment but a limited amount of mental power available. To recognize and interpret the symbols presented to him requires part of this power; to arrange and combine the images suggested requires a further part ; and only that part which remains can be used for realizing the thought conveyed. Hence the more time and attention it takes to receive and understand each sentence, the less time and attention can be given to the contained idea, and the less vividly will that idea be conceived.” 18

This treatment of language as a mechanism is important but inadequate, for literary expression is more than a mechanism ; it is an organism quickened with personality. While clearness leaves the reader less to do, personal force inspires him to do more.

14 “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” 5, 1, 12-20.

John Milton (1608-1674), “Of Education.”

16 “The Philosophy of Style,” pt. 1, sec. 1.

Prose must have clearness and force, and it may have beauty. Poetry must have beauty and force, and it may have clearness. Force is common to both as the essential quality of all rhetorical expression.

8. The Secondary Modes of Style. — There are four secondary modes of style— -narration, description, exposition, and argumentation. The principle of classification is the motive of the composition. When the motive is to show the relations of things in time, we have narration; when the motive is to show the relations of things in * space, we have description ; when the motive is to show the relations of things in thought, we have exposition; when the motive is to show the relations of things to personality, we have argumentation.

The word that is common to all these modes of style is relations. When a child says one — one — one — he is not counting. He is not counting when he says one, two, three, unless he consciously notes the relations of these objects in a series. It is only as events are set forth in a series showing relations that we have narration. Events alone do not make narration. It is only as objects are related in portrayal that we get a unity of scene that constitutes description. The relations of thought developing logical character and meaning constitute the mode of style that we call exposition. The relations of thought and personality, giving personal motive and endowing things with convincing and persuasive power, develop the mode of style that we call argumentation. In all of these modes of style the essential word is relations. The problem is one of putting things together.

We cannot too often say that the problem of composition is not things, but the relations of things. In our scientific laboratories we analyze and combine and re-combine. We work among the elements without adding or subtracting. It is significantly true in composition that “there is no new thing under the sun.” Nearly everything in the Shakespeare plays is gathered from sources in the old books. New relations of old things made the plays of Shakespeare.

The secondary modes of style may be naturally treated in the following order — narration, description, exposition, argumentation. This order begins with the most objective form and ends with the most subjective form. In experience it is the objective that awakens the subjective. Things of space and time, objects of sense-perception, enter first into conscious experience, and these are naturally the first subjects of expression. A common objectivity relates narration and description. Narration is treated first because it is a more natural and an easier mode of expression than description.

Narration is congenial because of the analogy of succession in events and in language : things that occur in successive moments of time are expressed in words that follow a like succession in time. Action also is congenial, and all narration is action.

Description, the second objective mode, is most difficult. First, it is difficult because things that are motionless in spade are expressed by words that move in time : a changing medium of words seeks to express the essentially changeless. Second, it is difficult because relations of things in space are not as obvious as relations of things in time. Time-relations are usually cause and effect ; space-relations are similarity and contrast or contiguity. These space-relations are largely matters of personal interpretation. This personal interpretation, which is the distinguishing difference between a portrait and a photograph, constitutes the glory and the difficulty of description.

Exposition deals with the relation of things, not in space or in time, but in the mind. The material of exposition is all metaphysical. Not percepts but concepts give the essential character to this mode of expression. Exposition explains the things that are not seen, and it is significant of our needs that most composition is expository. Tfie reasoning faculty reacts on sense-perceptions, on images and memories, and the result is a web of syllogism, usually expressed in the intellectual type of prose.

Argumentation has its basis in a personal relation; so subjective quality enters in a controlling way into this mode of style, giving it much of the distinctive character of the oratorical standard. The bond of interest connecting things with personality is of a two-fold character, stirring the reason into activity and producing conviction, and involving the feelings and so developing persuasion. Conviction and persuasion constitute the important field of argumentation.

Narration and description form a natural group ; they have in common their origin in the feelings and their appeal to the imagination.

Exposition forms a second class, having its origin in the reasoning faculty and its appeal, also, to the reason.

Argumentation is a compound form, having in it elements of conviction and persuasion : conviction is of the reasoning faculty and persuasion is of the feelings.

The four secondary modes shown as distinct forms are not found so clearly distinct in literature. Like the elements in nature, usually in compound forms, these secondary modes of style are combined and interwoven. Illustrative passages cited in studying these modes are usually complex, and are classified

I

II merely by the dominant mode. Narration and description have so much in common that they naturally merge with one another. Description and exposition are unconsciously interwoven in writing, because the imagination does not habitually separate itself from the logical faculty. The popular term “description” means more of technical exposition than description. Argumentation also has such a range of appeal that it utilizes all the other modes.

9. The Elements of Composition. — Analysis of a book shows the following elements: the composition expressing a unit of design, the paragraph expressing a single thought-progression, the sentenr^^xpressing a single personal effect, the word expressing a unit of meaning, and the syllable expressing a unit of sound. Each of these is an important field of study.

10. The Composition. — The composition is a unit of design. It is a book or a part of a book expressing in completeness some plan. The definition applies to a work as a whole, or to any section or chapter of a work expressing one complete plan. The composition is the field of vision and construction. To select a subject, to read and make notes, to converse and gather facts and opinions, to study every phase of the subject and become familiar with the whole field of it, — this is the preliminary work of composition, and it lasts until the light comes like the dawn of day, and the vision of the composition lies like a fair prospect upon the horizon.

What visions made up the vast design of Gibbon’s “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire” ! What a dreadful horizon was that of Carlyle in the “French Revolution” ! What elemental grandeur characterized the design of Darwin’s “Origin of Species” ! Drummond studied analogies between natural and spiritual forces and conceived his “Natural Law in the Spiritual World.” The lights of the world that shine with spiritual meaning give themes to the poets. So arose the poems of Wordsworth, and Tennyson, and Browning. Observations of matter give rise to scientific hypotheses. Meditations on human experience lead to philosophical conceptions. So the thinking of men crystallizes into unity of design. There is the range of human interest in the stories of Irving and Hawthorne and Poe, of Stevenson and Kipling. What a v/orld of vision is there! We know many of their compositions well enough to imagine how they arose.

The composition is the realm of invention, the field of the literary strategist and tactician. It requires decision and

I strong thinking to bring the composition from the vague definition of a conceived design to the definite outline of a formulated plan. Many plans are conceivably good, each a working hypothesis for expressing the idea of the composition. The best plan is the one that meets most perfectly all the conditions of all the factors — the motive of the Self, the susceptibilities of the Other-Self, the demands of the thought, and the limitations and opportunities of the occasion.

The first process in the composition is invention, the finding of material. The second process is the recognition of the nature of the material and the selection of the mode of style best fitted to express it. This determines whether the composition is prose or poetry, whether it is narrative, descriptive, expository, or argumentative. The choice of these modes requires nice discrimination and practical good sense. The third process is the formulation of the plan.