On Rhetoric ~ Socratic Dialogue 1 [Ashton Kutcher]

We’ve talked quite a bit about the 5 Common Topics of Invention (a great dialectic tool) this past year. [The Question] It’s time to learn something new. Let’s move up a rung on the ladder and chat about rhetoric. [The Conversation]

A year or two ago, I had the privilege of speaking on the topic of Rhetoric at a couple Classical Conversations Parent Practicums. As is always the case, I’ve learned so much more about the topic after the fact.

Now I’m itching to lead a Socratic discussion on the topic of Rhetoric using only two videos.

I’m not the person with answers, I’m the person with questions. Will you join me?

I’d like to introduce you to the very basics of formal rhetoric, and then we’ll practice identifying the elements of rhetoric after watching a[n entertaining] persuasive speech.

Come on—it’ll be fun!

Rhetoric is persuasion aimed at the truth. According to Plato, it is the art of soul-leading by means of words.

As Scott Crider writes in The Office of Assertion:

The study of rhetoric educates one in a particular liberty, the ‘liberty to handle the world, to remake it, if only a little, and to hand it to others in a shape with may influence their actions.’ Through this ‘office of assertion,’ the writer is a leader of souls… Rhetoric is ‘the care of words and things’; that care is associative, a practice one learns—and never stops learning—in the presence of others, the ones you lead and are led by. Such soul-leading is a liberal power, one which in its finest and fullest manifestation is a form of love; the finest rhetorician not only loves wisdom, but also loves others who do so. The finest rhetor, then, is a friend.

Let’s cover the basics briefly. [The Art of Manliness has an excellent introduction to rhetoric, if you’re interested in reading just a smidge more.]

Canons of Rhetoric

Invention (inventio): [This is where Aristotle’s 5 Common Topics of Invention belong.] The content of an argument (gathering information and ideas)

Arrangement (dispositio): The structure of an argument (arranging the content)

Elocution (elocutio): The style of an argument (discovering the best style and words in which to express the ideas)

Memory (memoria): The memorization of an argument (including the memorization of general knowledge to be used in conversation and debate)

Delivery (pronuntiato): The presentation of an argument (formatting writing or delivering a speech with effective body language and voice)
 
Writing in particular focuses on the first three canons.

“Invention is what you argue, organization [arrangement], in what order you argue, and style [elocution], how you argue.” (Scott Crider)

The Institute for Excellence in Writing program, used by Classical Conversations students in 4th-6th grades, focuses on structure (arrangement) and style (elocution).

The Lost Tools of Writing program, used by CC students in 7th grade and up, places more emphasis on the invention process with the 5 Common Topics and slowly guides students through the arrangement of a formal persuasive essay while adding elocution elements one at a time.

I’ve covered invention (the 5 Common Topics) frequently here on the blog, so let’s move on to a brief introduction of arrangement.

What is arrangement? It is the ordering of your thoughts.

Basic Arrangement of a Persuasive Argument

I. Introduction—Exordium [Draw in your audience with a joke, question, quote, statistic, anecdote, or challenge.]

II. Background Information—Narratio(n) [Give your audience context for your argument along with any background information they will need (time, place, characters, causes).]

III. Proof of the case—Confirmatio(n) [State your thesis, state the number of proofs you will using, and briefly state each proof (reason to support your thesis), then detail each proof with supporting information.]

IV. Address Opposition—Refutatio(n) [Refute the opposition by stating the counter position’s possible proofs and explaining why these proofs are not persuasive.]

V. Conclusion/Amplification—Peroratio(n) [Restate your thesis and proofs. Tell the audience to whom the issue matters and why. Inspire enthusiasm!]
 
In order to be a soul-leader, you must consider your audience as you are preparing and delivering your argument.

This is where the modes of persuasion come in to play.

Modes of Persuasion

Ethos is an appeal based on the speaker’s credibility.

Logos is an appeal based on reason and logic.

Pathos is an appeal to the audience’s emotions.

Wes Callihan introduces the modes of persuasion in the following video from his Western Culture DVD series.

Cicero on Rhetoric: Ethos, Pathos, Logos (Old Western Culture)

Now that you have a basic idea of the canons of formal rhetoric, the arrangement of an argument, and the modes of persuasion, let’s watch an unlikely example of rhetoric and identify these elements.

[Heads up: the speaker uses the word “crap” and “sexy” in this video if you are watching with kids and that concerns you.]





And now a few questions for you.

Who is Ashton Kutcher’s audience?

Does his audience need to be persuaded of something?

How does he initially connect with that audience? How does he get their attention? [Exordium]

Is his delivery (voice, body language) appropriate to the audience? [Pronuntiato]

Is his style and word choice appropriate to the audience? Is the length of the speech appropriate to the occasion? [Elocution]

Does he give any background or context for his argument? [Narratio]

Is the order of his speech clear? [Dispositio]

Is the purpose of his speech clear? Does he state a thesis or subject for his speech? Does he state the number of ideas (proofs) and introduce them briefly? Does he flesh out each idea with supporting information? [Confirmatio]

Is he familiar with his topic? Does he have enough information gathered? [Inventio]

Is his speech memorized? [Memorio]

Is his speech logical and reasonable? [Logos]

How does he establish his credibility for his argument? Is his credibility strong or weak? In what ways? Is his credibility weaker for any of his arguments? [Ethos]

Does he appeal to the audience’s emotions? How? [Pathos]

Does he restate his ideas in conclusion? Does he identify his audience and tell them why his speech matters to them? Does he inspire them to action? [Peroratio]

I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments.

Part 2 is coming up. I can see you on the edge of your seat! [grin]

A Day in the Life ~ Monday

A Homeschooling Monday in the Life of Levi (14), Luke (11), Leif (9), and Lola (5) [And Heidi, Too]

Mondays are our Classical Conversations community day.

[I spend a good portion of Sundays prepping for Mondays. I go to the grocery store. Make sure the kids have their papers and whatnot for school. Do laundry. Set out (and iron if need be) clothes for Lola and myself. Try to have the house relatively clean and neat (though this is a losing battle). Have Leif and Lola bathe. Try to get the kids to bed at a decent hour (also a losing battle). After the kids are in bed, I prep for my Essentials class, write out a task list for Levi, and set out lunch bags and snacks and such for Monday morning. I usually fall in bed around midnight or after.]

6:00  I hit the snooze button. Repeatedly. I am not a morning person. My preferred wake-up time is 9 am. Even 10 am would be nice...

6:20  I grudgingly roll out of bed and head to the shower. After getting myself half ready, I read my Bible and devotion book for a few minutes and pray for strength for the day. Russ leaves at some point. (He’s usually gone before I get out of bed, but his schedule is off this week.)

7:00  I wake the boys and go to check my email. Internet isn’t working on my computer. Luke pops out of bed, gets dressed, empties the dishwasher, and cooks some bacon. I pack Lola’s snack bag and begin packing lunch. I repeatedly go in the boys’ room to wake Levi and Leif.

7:30  Levi finally drags himself to the shower.

7:45  I drag Leif out of bed. I make eggs for Leif and myself and egg on toast for Levi. Luke toasts a bagel and eats it with cream cheese.

7:50  Lola wakes up and I give her Greek yogurt.

8:00  The push to the finish line begins. I stagger down the stretch, carrying Levi, Leif, and Lola. “Brush your teeth. Get dressed. Pack your snacks/lunch. Brush your teeth. Comb your hair. Get dressed. Gather your things. BRUSH YOUR TEETH. Where is your snack bag? Lola, stop playing with your toys and get dressed.” Leif sits like a stone in the living room. He refuses to get dressed because his jeans aren’t comfortable. I finish getting myself ready. I put a ponytail in Lola’s hair while Luke loads all our stuff in the truck and starts the engine so it will warm up. “Get your shoes on!” Lola won’t let me help her so I leave her to do it herself. She throws her shoes across the room. Levi is still getting ready and I’m starting to twitch. He asks, “Mom, do you think it would be unethical to augment a human with cybernetics?” (Clearly his mind is not on teeth brushing.) I’m supposed to take a frozen pie to a friend (for a swim team fundraiser), so I get a cooler with ice ready. And then I can’t find the pie. We leave the house a disaster.

8:50  We’re all in the truck by the skin of our teeth. The truck makes a weird beeping noise when I put it in reverse, and I wonder what’s going on. Luke says in exasperation, “We’re going to be late if you contemplate the baffling enigma indefinitely!” (I’m pretty sure he means “Forget it and get moving!” but I’m glad the vocabulary from Essentials is sticking.)

8:51  Lola realizes that she left her presentation (her toy for show-and-tell) at home and starts wailing. I tell her that’s the consequence of not getting ready with a good attitude. Levi hooks up his music to the truck speakers so we listen to “Fear Not This Night” from Guild Wars at top volume.

8:53  We’re at my mom’s house to drop off Levi with his bin of school work. [He’s doing some of the Classical Conversations Challenge B work at home and with his friend. Russ usually works from home on Mondays so Levi can stay with him, but this week he has to be in his office all week for training.] I chat with my mom and dad for a few minutes. Luke counts each minute and calls for me to stop talking.

9:01  We leave for our day at Classical Conversations. Lola is still screaming and she proceeds to scream the whole way there.

9:13  Lola has now been screaming for more than 20 minutes. Luke unloads the truck and the boys go to class. Lola refuses to pull herself together. We finally walk in (late) while she’s still throwing a fit, but she refuses to go to her class (for the first time ever). She sits in the back of Luke’s class and looks at her book. Luke’s class is learning about Ghiberti and working on an art project. The moment I’m distracted watching Luke, she disappears. I find her, she still won’t go to class, so I take her back to Luke’s. We go back and forth between classes for most of the morning, and she never finds her groove. She does manage to "massage" her face with sandpaper from their art project, and then has a painful red rash around her mouth for the rest of the day. I peek in on Leif’s class a couple times. The classes learn their new memory work in timeline, history, Latin, English grammar, math, science, and geography. They learn about core samples with a science activity. Each of the students give presentations and eat snacks. Then they review past memory work.

12:00  It’s finally lunch time. I spend most of the time talking. (And dealing with Lola. And losing Lola.) I’m late setting up my class. I’m late taking Lola to afternoon play camp in the gym.

1:00  My Essentials class begins barely on time. Game on. Luke and Leif are in my class. We cover complex, imperative, S-Vt-IO-DO sentences and then active and passive voice verb structures. We take a quick break and then come back to read IEW papers and cover the multiple-source, fused-outline research assignment with a new style tool (luckily it’s the www.asia.wub subordinating conjunctions that we covered during grammar). Leif is completely checked out half way through the afternoon and reads a book in the back of class while humming. (I’m trying to figure out appropriate expectations for him as we’re adjusting to a Tourette Syndrome diagnosis along with other comorbid diagnoses such as ADHD.) We end the afternoon with a rousing math game of Battleship Board Slam.

3:15  Class is over and I’m exhausted. I try to keep a fairly high-energy class, and my voice is shot. Clean up begins, but I have great helpers. Luke gathers up most of our class stuff and loads the truck. I pick up Lola from play camp. It seems she had a rough afternoon, as well. I see an early bedtime in our near future.

3:40  We finally leave CC.

3:55  We pick up Levi and I chat with my parents for a moment. Levi shows me the new Doctor Who shirt he got on a shopping trip with Bambi.

4:05  I stop next door at my sister’s and drop off a bin of girl clothes and pick up mini muffin tins.

4:15  We’re home. Hallelujah. We unload the truck. I discover I left the kitchen window open (from the bacon fumes). Oops. The house is still a disaster. I change into my pjs and grab a cold beverage. The kids have lost screen time, so they head outside for an epic Nerf battle. I pre-heat the oven for frozen pizza and discover I bought thin crispy crust instead of the thick crust that we like. I lie down in bed until the pizza is done.

5:00  Internet still not working on my computer, but I figure I can type up a log of our day. I hear a strange noise and can’t figure out what is making it.

5:05  I discover what the curious noise is: Luke is on the roof.

5:15  The kids come in for pizza.

5:45  Luke finds the pie I couldn’t find this morning—buried in the chest freezer. He begs to bake something. I relent and give him a recipe for glazed lemon muffins.

6:25  Russ arrives home. He brings me chocolate and fixes my internet. I heat up some food for him. I finish blogging.

7:00  Luke is finishing "cleaning" up the kitchen from his baking mess. It's read-aloud time and then an early bedtime for everyone. Maybe I'll get some reading in tonight. Or maybe I'll just go to sleep. Yeah, that sounds good.

Rhetoric and Poetry ~ More on Parallelism and the 5 Common Topics

In November, I explored the topic of parallelism here on the blog, and I haven’t stopped thinking about it or finding examples in my reading. The above quote is similar in some ways to the quote I shared in the previous blog post:



I’ve noticed that many of the quotes to which I am drawn employ parallelism in some form. The structure seems to make them more accessible, logical, and memorable. The first word that often comes to my mind is “brilliant!”—so simple and yet incredibly profound. Parallel structure also tends to distill a quote down to the basics and eliminate extraneous or distracting words and ideas. It reinforces the idea that a tight form requires a precision of ideas while counter-intuitively increasing creative thought process (hello, poetry!).

I’ve thought more deeply about these two quotes than almost anything else I’ve read recently.

But not as deeply as I could think about them if I decided to use the 5 Common Topics.

Let’s do that.

Definition

I could spend a whole conversation defining one of these words:

Quarrel

Rhetoric

Poetry

Grammar

Justice

Mercy

[To what broader categories (genus) do these things belong? What are other things (species) in that category? How does each word differ from the other things within the category? What are its parts? Take each word separately, or put them all together. The point is to think about ideas!]

Comparison

[Note: I’ve found a few different versions of the Yeats quote online but here I’ve used the version I found in Greg Wolfe’s book Beauty Will Save the World. For discussion purposes, we’ll use this version specifically.]

How are the two quotes similar in structure? Different?

They both use parallel structure. They are both similar in length. They both contain two independent clauses (the clauses in the first quote are connected by a semicolon, the second quote is expressed in two sentences).

They both use antitheses (contrasting opposite ideas: others/ourselves, rhetoric/poetry and justice/mercy, grammar/poetry).

The first quote uses anaphora (repetition of words at the beginning of phrases, clauses, or sentences: “out of the quarrel”).

The second quote uses epistrophe (repetition of words at the end of phrases, clauses, or sentences: “of things”).

Anaphora and epistrophe are similar (repeating words), and yet opposite (beginning and end).

The first quote contains an action verb (make).

The second quote uses a linking verb (is) to create metaphors.

How are the ideas similar? How are they different?

They both say something about the nature of poetry. The first concerns the origin or impetus of poetry. The second addresses a quality of poetry by use of metaphor?

They both express contrast and relationship of ideas.

[Clearly these questions are more abstract. Answers will vary widely. That’s why I want to sit down and have a conversation over cups of favorite beverages with all of you!!]

Relationship

Both of these quotes are specifically addressing the relationship of things.

How is justice related to mercy?

How is grammar related to poetry?

How is rhetoric related to poetry?

How are we ourselves related to others?

Which came first? Is one dependent upon the other? Does one cause the other?

Circumstance

What was the circumstance or context in which each quote was written?

From the Frederick Buechner Blog:

The following is an excerpt called “Justice” originally published in Whistling in the Dark and later in Beyond Words: 

If you break a good law, justice must be invoked not only for goodness' sake but for the good of your own soul. Justice may consist of paying a price for what you've done or simply of the painful knowledge that you deserve to pay a price, which is payment enough. Without one form of justice or the other, the result is ultimately disorder and grief for you and everybody. Thus justice is itself not unmerciful. 

Justice also does not preclude mercy. It makes mercy possible. Justice is the pitch of the roof and the structure of the walls. Mercy is the patter of rain on the roof and the life sheltered by the walls. Justice is the grammar of things. Mercy is the poetry of things. 

The Cross says something like the same thing on a scale so cosmic and full of mystery that it is hard to grasp. As it represents what one way or another human beings are always doing to each other, the death of that innocent man convicts us as a race and we deserve the grim world that over the centuries we have made for ourselves. As it represents what one way or another we are always doing not so much to God above us somewhere as to God within us and among us everywhere, we deserve the very godlessness we have brought down on our own heads. That is the justice of things. 

But the Cross also represents the fact that goodness is present even in grimness and God even in godlessness. That is why it has become the symbol not of our darkest hopelessness but of our brightest hope. That is the mercy of things. Granted who we are, perhaps we could have seen it no other way.

According to biographies of William Butler Yeats (and here), he seemed to wrestle at great lengths with his ideas about religion at least, and he was an acclaimed poet. The quote is found in “Anima Hominis.” I won’t claim to understand anything about it, but I found the following excerpt from this analysis fascinating.

In "Anima Hominis," Yeats defines the soul/psyche/mind of the creative individual by means of his Anti-self/double/mask theory and then adds a Daimon element. The focus is on artistic creativity, and how it is served by the tension between self and anti-self: "We make out of the quarrel with others, rhetoric, but out of the quarrel with ourselves, poetry" (331). It is to poets that the other "self" comes--not to "practical men who believe in money": "The other self, the anti-self or the antithetical self, as one may choose to name it comes to those who are no longer deceived, whose passion is reality" [reality, in a Platonic sense] (331). This anti-self is demanding, and accepting its strictures is different from passively accepting the mores of society: "If we cannot imagine ourselves as different from what we are, and try to assume that second self, we cannot impose a discipline upon ourselves... Active virtue, as distinguished from the passive acceptance of a code, is therefore theatrical, consciously dramatic, the wearing of a mask..." (334)

What other things were happening or being said about the ideas at the same time?

Authority

What do the authors of the quotes have in common? Differences?

Both men. Both alive in the years 1926-1939. Both acclaimed writers. Both spent time contemplating theological ideas.

Buechner—American novelist and theologian (wrote fiction and non-fiction), Presbyterian minister, born in 1926, still living, finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 1981.

Yeats—Irish poet, 1865-1939, awarded Nobel Prize for Literature, born into Irish Protestant family but seemed to wrestle at great lengths with his ideas about religion, eventually joining a new group called "The Esoteric Order of the Golden Dawn" which incorporated astrology and traditional European Cabalistic Magic.

Who else has something to say about justice and mercy?

Psalm 103:6,8
The Lord works vindication and justice for all who are oppressed. The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.

[ETA] Micah 6:8
He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.

Rhetoric and poetry?

Aristotle? The author of both Rhetoric and Poetics.

Rhetoric is “the power of discovering the possible means of persuasion in reference to any subject whatever.” 

“Poetry is finer and more philosophical than history; for poetry expresses the universal, and history only the particular.” (More antithesis: poetry/history, universal/particular)

Quintilian?

“I hold that no one can be a true orator unless he is also a good man, and, even if he could be, I would not have it so.”

Saint Augustine?

“Eloquent speakers give pleasure, wise ones salvation.” (Hello again, antithesis…)

N.D. Wilson and Douglas Wilson in The Rhetoric Companion?

“The point of true rhetoric, in all its guises, is to deal with ignorance, bring about like-mindedness, and motivate to action.” (More parallelism.)

T. S. Eliot?

“Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality. But, of course, only those who have personality and emotions know what it means to want to escape from these things.”

Robert Frost?

“Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words.” 

“A poem begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness.”

[Poets have a lot to say about poetry…]

Who or what is popularly considered an authority and why? Do you agree?

::

Now that we’ve reviewed the 5 Common Topics, we’ll move from dialectic to rhetoric in the next post.

Parallelism ~ On the Grammar and Poetry of Things

I haven’t waxed philosophical about The Lost Tools of Writing yet this season, so I’ll try to make up for lost time this month.

In this post I won’t go on and on about the brilliance of the 5 Common Topics of Invention and using The Lost Tools of Writing as a “thinking program.” [They still are and we still do, but there’s more!]

Instead, I’d like to talk about parallelism.

One of the very first tools of style or “elocution” a Lost Tools of Writing student learns to wield is parallelism.

[To wield means “to hold (something, such as a tool or weapon) in your hands so that you are ready to use it.” I love this imagery. It reminds me of the quote “A word after a word after a word is power” by Margaret Atwood. We are teaching our students to be powerful with their words and ideas!]

What is parallelism?

Parallelism, also known as parallel structure or parallel construction, is a balance within one or more sentences of similar phrases or clauses that have the same grammatical structure. Some definitions of parallelism include repeated single parts of speech.

The most common number of repetitions is three. (I believe I have heard Andrew Pudewa say “Thrice, never twice.”)

Two famous examples of parallelism (I apologize, I have ancient history on the brain):

“Friends, Romans, countryman, lend me your ears…” (Shakespeare, Julius Caesar)

“I came; I saw; I conquered” (attributed to Julius Caesar)

The first contains a repetition of three nouns, one after another. The second contains a repetition of three clauses (subject and verb).

Exact words can be repeated within the structure (such as the use of “I” for each clause in “I came; I saw; I conquered” or “a word” in the earlier quote by Margaret Atwood “A word after a word after a word is power”), but it is not necessary.

If you still don’t quite get it, stick with me. I hope the concept will be clearer by the end of the post.

Why parallelism?

Parallelism requires a student to be balanced and clear in the expression of his ideas.

Lost Tools of Writing students learn to write their persuasive essay proofs in parallel structure. This is a natural place for parallelism as the students list three reasons to support their thesis. We desire their reasons to be clear and balanced in order to be more persuasive.

For example, in our persuasive essay for Where the Red Fern Grows, our original thesis and proofs were as follows:

“Billy should have traveled to town alone to get his dogs for three reasons: his good character traits, he was prepared, his actions paved the way for his hunting successes.”

The structures in that list are adjective-adjective-adjective-noun, pronoun-linking verb-adjective, and adjective-noun-transitive verb-adjective-direct object-prepositional phrase. No similar structures. The sentence is clunky.

We changed the thesis and proofs to the following:

“Billy should have traveled to town alone to claim his dogs for three reasons: he possessed positive character traits, he prepared for the journey, and he paved the way for his future hunting success.”

Now, we have three similar clauses. “He” is the subject of all three clauses. We have three strong past-tense action verbs (with alliteration!): possessed, prepared, and paved. And we have a direct object, a prepositional phrase, and a direct object and a prepositional phrase. Not exactly alike, but the main body of each structure (clause with “he” followed by an action verb) is the same and we maintained a certain consistency of ideas. The new sentence sounds more persuasive to the ear.

When we outlined our persuasive essay for A Gathering of Days, we began with:

[Thesis] Catherine should not have left the blanket and food for the “Phantom.”

C. [Enumeration] 3

D. Exposition

1. Dangerous

2. No authority

3. No respect for property

We had to expand on the ideas in order to present them persuasively. In the end, we wrote the following:

“In A Gathering of Days Catherine had good intentions, but she should not have left the blanket and food for the “phantom” for three reasons. Catherine failed to protect herself and others from danger, she failed to obey the authorities over her, and she failed to respect the property of others.”

“Catherine” (or “she”) is the subject of each clause. “Failed” is the transitive verb in each clause. Each clause contains an infinitive (to protect, to obey, to respect) as a direct object. And each infinitive has a direct object with a prepositional phrase (herself/others from danger, authorities over her, property of others). These proofs are very closely parallel, and the ideas sound strong.

Have I lost you?

This may lead us to the next point.

Parallelism requires a certain proficiency of grammar.

Yes, the justice of things. Students need to know how the English language works in order to use it most intentionally and effectively. For some people, grammar (or justice) is not fun. But it is necessary. It gives consistency, clarity, and structure to our thoughts. It allows us to communicate more powerfully.

The wonderful thing about parallelism is that it is also poetry, which leads us to our next point.

Parallelism pleases the ear.

Parallelism lends a certain pleasing rhythm to a sentence or a paragraph. It gives it a musical, poetic quality. It enchants the reader or the hearer.

Literary devices that appeal to the senses (the sense of hearing in particular) are called schemes.

Parallelism leads to more complex literary devices used for a higher degree of rhetorical style.

Once students master the basics of parallel structure, they can use their knowledge and experience to create antithesis, anaphora, asyndeton, symploce, epistrophe, and climax.

Again, these devices give a powerful, poetic quality to writing and speaking.

I love this building process.

In Teaching Writing with Structure and Style from Institute for Excellence in Writing (which Classical Conversations uses for kids ages 9-12 in the Essentials classes), students learn the advanced “decoration” (or style tool) “Triple Extensions” by repeating words, parts of speech, phrases, or clauses. Students (and parents!) in Classical Conversations Essentials classes also receive a firm foundation in English grammar.

With Lost Tools of Writing (used in Challenge A, B, and I? for kids 12 and older), students learn the formal rhetoric terms “elocution,” “scheme,” and “parallelism,” and learn to build parallel structures in their writing.

Then, students use this parallel structure to learn new literary devices.

There’s an intentional purpose and sequence and progression of complexity. It’s beautiful, really.

In Classical Conversations Challenge B, students have just learned to use antithesis in their writing. Antithesis “juxtaposes two contrasting ideas in parallel form… sometimes parts of speech made exactly parallel, sometimes with a looser structure” (mercy!).

There are many, many examples of antitheses in literature and speeches. One benefit of antitheses is that it is memorable. One famous example:

“That’s one small step for man; one giant leap for mankind.” (Neil Armstrong)

This sentence uses parallel phrases. “Small step” is contrasted with “giant leap” and “man” is contrasted with “mankind.”

Our opening quote uses antitheses in its parallel clauses, as well. “Justice” is contrasted with “mercy” and “grammar” is contrasted with “poetry.”

In our recent essay on Where the Red Fern Grows, we wrote:

“While he was pulling away from his parents, he was bonding with his dogs.”

This sentence uses parallel clauses. “Pulling away” contrasts with “bonding” and “from his parents” contrasts with “with his dogs.”

Do you see how that works?

This is just a brief, imperfect introduction. It’s not meant to lead you to mastery. And, certainly, I’m not close to mastery, myself. I am, however, fascinated by words and structure and ideas, and I’ve found playing with parallelism to be great fun. I have also found myself noticing parallel structure in everything I am reading!

I’ll end this introductory post with a small sampling from my recent book stack, from picture books to Paradise Lost.

Examples from Literature

Hamlet, retold by Leon Garfield

The stars glared, the battlements shuddered, and Hamlet’s heart ceased as the terrible word was uttered. [independent clauses: adjective, noun, past-tense verb]

But Hamlet’s strangeness had already troubled the smooth surface of the court, puzzled the smiling King and vaguely distressed the easy Queen. [verb phrases: past-tense verb, adjective/article “the,” adjective, direct object; you’ll notice an added prepositional phrase with the first verb phrase and an -ly adverb with the third]

They wore their paper crowns, clutched their wooden swords, and shrugged their patchwork gowns with a dusty dignity and a seasoning of pride. [verb phrases: past-tense verb, adjective “their,” adjective, direct object]

“Thoughts black, hands apt, drugs fit, and time agreeing,” he hissed; and crept towards the sleeper with a black cloak trailing, like some malignant bat. [noun phrases: noun, adjective—these noun phrases are particularly forceful and poetic with the adjective appearing after the noun]

Crispin: The Cross of Lead by AVI

Above and below the church were our dwelling places, some forty cottages and huts of wattle and daub, thatch and wood, dirt and mud, all in varying shades of brown. [noun phrases, compound objects of the preposition “of”: noun “and” noun]

Stiff in limb, chilled in bone, numb in thought, I shifted about. [adjectival phrases: adjective, preposition “in,” object of the preposition]

Where the Red Fern Grows by Wilson Rawls

I had the wind of a deer, the muscles of a country boy, a heart full of dog love, and a strong determination. [direct object noun phrases: adjective/article, noun, adjectival prepositional phrase with “of” repeated in each]

The Master Swordsman by Alice Provensen

“How heavy the pails! How endless the wood! How far the well!” [adjectival phrases]

‘“LOOK SHARP!” glugged the jug… “ATTENTION!” clacked the box… “BE ALERT!” creaked the log. “THAT’S THE WAY” wheezed the teapot.’ [clauses: verb, subject]

The Hiding Place by Corrie Ten Boom 

Usually it was fog in January in Holland, dank, chill, and gray. [“Triple Extension” adjectives]

On me—until Betsie caught up with them—hems sagged, stockings tore, and collars twisted. [clauses: subject, verb]

Some great examples of antitheses in The Hiding Place:

Adventure and anguish, horror and heaven were just around the corner, and we did not know. [Nouns: adventure/anguish, horror/heaven… and alliteration as well!]

Young and old, poor and rich, scholarly gentlemen and illiterate servant girls—only to Father did it seem that they were all alike. [Nouns: young/old, poor/rich, scholarly gentlemen/illiterate servant girls]

Here we sat, our backs chilled by the ancient stone, our ears and hearts warmed by the music. [Noun phrases: backs/ears-hearts, chilled/warmed, by the ancient stone/by the music]

Paradise Lost by John Milton

Treble confusion, wrath and vengeance pour’d. [Nouns]

Is this the Region, this the Soil, the Clime, Said then the lost Arch Angel, “this the seat That we must change for Heav’n, this mournful gloom For that celestial light? [Noun phrases with repeated “this”] [We have a little antitheses at the end—”this mournful gloom” is contrasted with “that celestial light.”]

Antithesis:

Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heav’n. [Spoken by Satan, by the way.] [Infinitive phrases: reign/serve, Hell/Heav’n]

And one bonus example. Chiasmus is another literary device that employs a parallel structure. It is a repetition of words in reverse:

The mind is its own place, and in itself Can make a Heav’n of Hell, a Hell of Heav’n.

 

I challenge you to discover parallel structure in your own reading.

I’d love it if you shared examples in the comments!

On Memory [and Classical Conversations]

 

The question comes up often. Why do we memorize so much information in Classical Conversations?

I have addressed the topic of memorization often in the past few years, and I am gathering all my links and quotes in this post for the sake of convenience.

Later this month I will share a bit about the structure of our days this year and what we are learning and memorizing, or taking to heart.

:: Michael Clay Thompson

There are times when memorization is out of favor in education. Some might say that “rote memorization” is not appropriate as a teaching strategy. “Rote memorization,” however, is loaded language, biased against the discipline and effort required to learn things permanently. There is nothing wrong with challenge. We must remember that the alternative to remembering is forgetting, and when we teach something as important as grammar, that will be needed for one’s entire life, the ban on memorization makes little sense. There are areas of knowledge that should be memorized, and in the past, there was a better term for it: to learn by heart.

 

I watched this documentary when it was released. It brought me to tears. And it solidified my desire to have my boys memorize—poetry, speeches, Bible passages, history timeline, geography, prayers in Latin—not just because I want them to have the information at their fingertips, but because I want them to enlarge their hearts, to practice doing hard things, and to engage with ideas to the point of personal ownership.

Where we fail is in thinking that memorizing is an end. Rather, it is a doorway that leads to an exciting world.

It is a sense of accomplishment for kids. It empowers them. It gives them a chance to practice delivery in front of people—a huge skill. It is an introduction to big ideas. It is sophisticated vocabulary and language patterns embedded in their minds.

::  Q&A: Ken Burns on Why Memorizing the Gettysburg Address Matters @ Mother Jones

"[Memorization] serves a huge purpose. We're all sitting here wringing our hands at the sorry state of education. Everybody has got ideas: You've got to do STEM, and all of a sudden you've thrown the baby out with the bath water of humanities and arts and history. Nobody teaches civics anymore. People dismissed memorization 40 or 50 years ago as rote. It's not that; these kids prove it's not.

"I think the fact that we have completely tossed out memorization is a huge, huge flaw. Who knows, maybe that and civics are the glue that hold everything together? Civics is in fact politics, and politics is how things work not only in the political realm but in every other realm. It may be this simple mechanical glitch that unites everything. This is my philosophy."

:: Four score and seven reasons memorization is important @ WORLD Magazine

:: How Memorization Feeds Your Imagination @ The Gospel Coalition

But the craft of memorization is not just for our internal uses; like most crafts it has practical application. “As an art, memory was most importantly associated in the Middles Ages with composition, not simply with retention,” say Carruthers. “Those who practiced the crafts of memory used them—as all crafts are used—to make new things: prayers, meditations, sermons, pictures, hymns, stories, and poems.”

:: The Psychology of Why Creative Work Hinges on Memory and Connecting the Unrelated @ Brain Pickings

“A powerful and personally developed structuring of information — an active and selective memory — is as necessary for scientists as it is for poets.” [John-Steiner]

But perhaps the most potent use of memory in the creative mind is the cross-pollination of accumulated ideas and the fusing together of seemingly unrelated concepts into novel configurations — something Stephen Jay Gould, arguably the greatest science essayist of all time, captured when he said that his sole talent is “making connections.” John-Steiner quotes a similar sentiment by the Polish-born mathematician Stan Ulam:

“It seems to me that good memory — at least for mathematicians and physicists — forms a large part of their talent. And what we call talent or perhaps genius itself depends to a large extent on the ability to use one’s memory properly to find analogies, past, present and future, which [are] essential to the development of new ideas.”

 

:: Anthony Esolen, author of Ten Ways to Destroy the Imagination of Your Child, in the Foreword from Beauty in the Word: Rethinking the Foundations of Education by Stratford Caldecott

“But more than that, we would desire to bring children into the garden of created being, and thought, and expression. Caldecott reminds us that for the medieval schoolmen, as for Plato, education was essentially musical, an education in the cosmos or lovely order that surrounds us and bears us up. Thus when we teach our youngest children by means of rhymes and songs, we do so not merely because rhymes and songs are actually effective mnemonic devices. We do so because we wish to form their souls by memory: we wish to bring them up as rememberers, as persons, born, as Caldecott points out, in certain localities, among certain people, who bear a certain history, and who claim our love and loyalty.”

:: Anthony Esolen, Ten Ways to Destroy the Imagination of Your Child

“It is not surprising that, for the Greek mind, the Muses—of epic, history, astronomy, music, dance, tragedy, comedy, lyric poetry, and sacred poetry—should be daughters of Memory.”

::  Andrew Pudewa, 1 Myth, 2 Truths

“One simple and immutable fact about the human brain is that you can’t get something out of it that isn’t there to start with. Supernatural inspiration notwithstanding, human beings in general—and children in particular—really can’t produce... thoughts or concepts that they haven’t first experienced and stored. In other words, we cannot think a thought we don’t have to begin with. Even the most unique, creative, and extraordinary ideas can only exist as a combination and permutation of previously learned bits of information.”

:: How Memory, Focus and Good Teaching Can Work Together to Help Kids Learn @ Mind/Shift

"Without memorizing some information, it’s harder for the brain to acquire new knowledge and skills. It takes longer for the brain to process new information, and students are less likely and slower to ask informed and perceptive questions.

“The more you know, the more you can make conclusions, even be creative,” Klemm said. “All of these things have to be done by thinking, and thinking has to be done from what’s in your working memory.”

:: Sir Ken Robinson: Creativity Is In Everything, Especially Teaching @ Mind/Shift

"Creativity draws from many powers that we all have by virtue of being human. Creativity is possible in all areas of human life, in science, the arts, mathematics, technology, cuisine, teaching, politics, business, you name it. And like many human capacities, our creative powers can be cultivated and refined. Doing that involves an increasing mastery of skills, knowledge, and ideas."

::  Memorization Should Not Be a Lost Art @ Lesson Planet

“Memorization allows scholars to warehouse, if you will, a stockpile of concepts. Important background information will only help learners throughout their lives. Also, the creativity process is a mysterious one. The more useful concepts that students have stored, the easier it is for their minds to sift through their "files" and allow them the satisfaction of discovering new ideas."

:: Why It’s Still Important to Memorize @ Intellectual Takeout

But I think they also knew that memorization allows things to become a source of future contemplation. When we memorize something such as a poem or a song, we have the ability to more deeply reflect on it, to understand it more fully as time goes on. Knowledge then no longer merely remains external to us; it becomes a part of us. We become knowledge. 

:: Why We Should Memorize by Brad Leithauser @ The New Yorker

The best argument for verse memorization may be that it provides us with knowledge of a qualitatively and physiologically different variety: you take the poem inside you, into your brain chemistry if not your blood, and you know it at a deeper, bodily level than if you simply read it off a screen. Robson puts the point succinctly: “If we do not learn by heart, the heart does not feel the rhythms of poetry as echoes or variations of its own insistent beat.”

::  The Joy of the Memorized Poem @ The Atlantic

"But the very final pleasure is what I called “the pleasure of companionship”—and this was a way of talking about memorization. When you internalize a poem, it becomes something inside of you. You’re able to walk around with it. It becomes a companion. And so you become much less objective in your judgment of it. If anyone criticizes the poem, they’re criticizing something you take with you, all the time."

“I think that’s one reason I’ve always made my literature students choose a poem to memorize, even if it’s just something short—a little poem by, say, Emily Dickinson. They’re very resistant to it at first. There’s a collective groan when I tell them what they’re going to have to do.  I think it’s because memorization is hard. You can't fake it the way you might in responding to an essay question. Either you have it by heart, or you don’t. And yet once they do get a poem memorized, they can’t wait to come into my office to say it. I love watching that movement from thinking of memorization as a kind of drudgery, to seeing it as internalizing, claiming, owning a poem. It’s no longer just something in a textbook—it’s something that you’ve placed within yourself.”

"I think I read recently that we’re not suffering from an overflow of information—we’re suffering from an overflow of insignificance."

If you don’t know where to start for poetry memorization, may I make a few recommendations?

We have many books of poetry (I particularly like the Poetry for Young People series), but my favorites are poetry recordings that we can listen to in the car or during quiet time. I’ve found that this is the best way to get the words and sounds of the poetry embedded in our minds.

My boys love A Child's Garden of Songs and Back to the Garden, Robert Louis Stevenson poetry set to music, as well as The Days Gone By: Songs of the American Poets. (You can hear excerpts of the songs if you click on the MP3 option.)

Poetry Speaks to Children is a book of child-friendly poetry that includes a CD of poetry readings—most by the poem authors themselves!

A Child's Introduction to Poetry: Listen While You Learn About the Magic Words That Have Moved Mountains, Won Battles, and Made Us Laugh and Cry is just that. Part 1 introduces different types of poetry, and Part 2 contains a chronological introduction to many famous poets. (The illustrations are quite entertaining.) The accompanying CD is a treasure. Many of the poetry selections are wonderfully spoken by two different narrators (a man and a woman, so the recording doesn’t feel monotonous).

 

If you think that memorization is boring, you might enjoy the following video. No, we don’t have a two-story electric blue slide at our CC location, but our students enjoy singing and dancing (occasionally while standing on chairs) while practicing their memory work and my boys have been known to use a mini trampoline at home.

 

5 Common Topics Go to the Beach

There is no limit to the places and times one can use the 5 Common Topics to contemplate ideas or to have discussions with anyone about anything! If you’re new to the 5 Common Topics, it might be easiest to start with a single, concrete noun. We were at the beach last week, so let’s start there.

:: Definition

What is an ocean?

A large body of salt water.

To what broad category does ocean belong?

Body of water. Biome. Geographical feature.

:: Comparison

What is another body of water? (Or biome. Or geographical feature. Or something else. Compare any number of things.)

River

How are an ocean and a river similar?

They are bodies of water. They have currents. They are geographical features on earth. Plants and animals live in them. They are part of the water cycle, and smaller bodies of water feed into them. They are used for transportation. Civilizations have grown up near them. They are often used as recreational areas.

How are they different?

Oceans are made of salt water. Rivers are fresh water. Rivers can irrigate crops and water livestock.

Oceans are much larger than rivers. Different plants and animals live in them.

Oceans have tides and are affected by the moon. Rivers flow continuously in one direction.

:: Relationship

How are a river and an ocean related? (Or any other two things. Antecedent/consequence and cause/effect.)

Rivers flow into oceans (oceans do not flow into rivers). Water cycle.

:: Circumstance

(When and where questions work well here--geographical and historical context, specific or general.)

Where are the oceans? How many are there? What are they named?

What has happened on the oceans and when? Who has used them for what?

Exploration. Transportation. Wars. Commerce. Scientific research and discovery.

Magellan’s crew circumnavigated the world via oceans in the 1500s…

When were they discovered/identified/defined/mapped?

When were they created and how?

:: Testimony

Who or what has something to say about oceans?

Science? The Bible? Literature? Explorers? Quotes or Proverbs? Poets? Deep-sea divers or treasure hunters? Laws of nature?

[authorities, testimonials, statistics, laws, maxims, precedents…]

Are these reliable authorities? Why or why not?

 

[Clearly, the further you move down the list of topics, the more in-depth (and endless) the conversation can become. I shared a few specific questions and even fewer answers just as examples. You may want to argue with some of my examples. Feel free. That’s part of the discussion! Or come up with your own questions and answers.]

 

If you are interested in reading more posts about the 5 Common Topics, give these a try:

• Discussing a picture book
• Discussing The Secret Garden
• Discussing Crispin
• Using comparison to discuss Hamlet
• Using comparison to discuss movies
• Discussing the word “leisure”

If you want to learn more about the history of the 5 Common Topics and how to integrate them across subjects within the curriculum, I highly recommend reading The Question by Leigh Bortins.

Language Love, Part II ~ Logos

[Read Part I here.]

In my first post in this language series, I explored the idea that language is a cosmos, an orderly and beautiful form with which we think and communicate.

Today, I would like to contemplate the word logos.

Logos is defined as “reason, thought of as constituting the controlling principle of the universe and as being manifested by speech. In Christian theology it is the eternal thought or word of God, made incarnate in Jesus Christ.”

Merriam-Webster defines logos as the divine wisdom manifest in the creation, government, and redemption of the world.

Logos comes from an original Greek word meaning “a word, saying, speech, discourse, thought, proportion, ratio, reckoning.”

In the Gospel of John, Jesus is the incarnate Logos, the Living Word, through which all things are made.

We’re starting at the very beginning again.

John 1:1 In the beginning was the Word (Logos), and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning.

John 1:14 The Word (Logos) became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.

1 John 1:1 That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched—this we proclaim concerning the Word (Logos) of life. The life appeared; we have seen it and testify to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and has appeared to us.

“In Greek philosophy and theology, [Logos is] the divine reason implicit in the cosmos, ordering it and giving it form and meaning.”

Consider the Cosmos (order and ornament) of creation, which God spoke into being in Genesis 1.

Psalm 33:6 By the word (Logos) of the Lord were the heavens made, their starry host by the breath of his mouth.

Psalm 33:9 For he spoke, and it came to be; he commanded, and it stood firm.

Hebrews 11:3 Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the Word (Logos) of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear.

A.W. Tozer writes:

One of the greatest realities with which we have to deal is the Voice of God in His world. The briefest and only satisfying cosmogony is this: ‘He spake and it was done.’ The why of natural law is the living Voice of God immanent in His creation. And this word of God which brought all worlds into being cannot be understood to mean the Bible, for it is not a written or printed word at all, but the expression of the will of God spoken into the structure of all things.”

Language is a universal human structure, given to us by God, in whose image we are created.

Exodus 3:13-14 Moses said to God, “Suppose I go to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ Then what shall I tell them?” God said to Moses, “I am who I am. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: ‘I am has sent me to you.’”

The name God gives Himself in Exodus 3, “I am,” is structured. It is a predicated noun, name and being.

The structure, the very fabric, of human language is the subject and predicate.

Andrew Kern writes:

Grammar is where God, man, the soul, thinking, knowledge, and the cosmos all come together.

Grammar is based on the link between something that exists and something that applies to something that exists. God "exists." He called Himself, "I Am." He made us, putting us in the garden to steward it. As stewards, we need to know what we are stewarding, so he made us able to know the world we live in. The world around us exists as things that act or are acted on and have properties or qualities. In other words, the world is full of subjects with predicates. To know the world around us we must think it. When we think something, we always think something about it. In other words, the mind thinks subjects and predicates. Predicate comes from the Latin and means "to say about." All thought and all existence revolve around the relation between subjects and predicates (substances and properties if you like).

On the brilliant simplicity of subjects and predicates, Michael Clay Thompson writes:

Why is grammar fun and valuable? Grammar reveals to us the beauty and power of our own minds. With only eight kinds of words and two sides (subject and predicate) of each idea, we can make the plays of Shakespeare, or the novels of Toni Morrison, or the poems of Elizabeth Bishop. No system, so gorgeously elegant, could be expected to make such a language. Through grammar we see the simple form of our binary minds; in all of our sentences, however elaborate, we are making a predicate about a subject, and this reveals the meaning of clarity. For each sentence or idea, I must know both of these two things: what you are talking about, and what you are saying about it. For each paragraph of sentences, I must know what the paragraph is about, and what you are saying about it. For each essay of paragraphs, I must know what the essay is about, and what you are saying about it. A sentence, with its two sides, is a model of the mind.

We’ll be spending more time with sentences later in this series.

Language Love, Part I ~ Cosmos

[I’ll be exploring the concept of language in this five-part series as I am preparing to tutor an Essentials class (English grammar and writing) with our Classical Conversations community this coming year (year six!).]

We use language to think about and communicate ideas.

We use grammar to think about and communicate ideas about language.

Grammar is a form or cosmos.

Let’s start our exploration of language with the word cosmos.

A cosmos is an orderly or harmonious system. The word derives from the Greek term κόσμος (kosmos), meaning literally "order" or "ornament" and metaphorically "world,” and is diametrically opposed to the concept of chaos.

[Explore cosmos in depth here.]

While we’re at it, let’s look up the definition of ornament: (Merriam-Webster)
2a. something that lends grace or beauty
3: one whose virtues or graces add luster to a place or society

Order. (Form. Structure. Truth.) Ornament. (Beauty. Harmony. Grace. Virtue.)

Order + Beauty (literally) = World (metaphorically)

Let’s go to the very beginning.

Genesis 1:1-2 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.

Formless. And what did God do? Created form: separated light and darkness, waters and sky, land and seas.

Empty. Once the form was established, God filled the place with beauty: plants, stars, birds, sea creatures, animals, man.

Genesis 2:1 Thus the heavens and the earth were completed in all their vast array.

(Words matter!)

Array: verb (used with object):
1. to place in proper or desired order
2. to clothe with garments, especially of an ornamental kind; dress up; deck out.

And, as Leigh Bortins says, that’s how you teach everything to everybody. Figure out what the form is, and then you have all the content in the world to make it creative, beautiful!

Sentence forms
Latin ending forms
Math formulas
The structure of a story
Poetry forms

You can put in whatever content you wish once you know the form. The content is what makes it unique and interesting.

When we learn the grammar of language, we are learning form so that we have the tools to communicate truth, goodness, and beauty.

Classical Conversations Challenge Program Spring Protocol

I again had the privilege of photographing our local Classical Conversations Challenge Program Spring Protocol. Just as they did last year, the students in Challenge I, II, and III attended a formal dinner at the home of one of our community families (who graciously also offered their whole family to cook and serve, even though they do not have older Challenge students). And I was again reminded why we are part of this community. The sight of all these parents coming together to create something wonderful for the students was incredible, each person serving according to their strengths and passions. I love these people!

The food was delicious! There was a soup course, a salad course, the main dish (a choice between pork, chicken, and vegetarian), a sorbet, and dessert (chocolate or strawberry).

These twenty students were joined by an additional nine students from another campus for a few hours of dancing at a lovely venue.

What an outstanding group of high school students!

Crispin and Lost Tools of Writing [CC Challenge A] Discussion Notes and ANI

Crispin: The Cross of Lead by Avi is one of my favorite CC Challenge A literature selections of the year. I made many marks in my book as I was reading. The imagery is gorgeous with beautiful schemes and tropes (literary devices: parallelism, similies, metaphors, alliteration, etc.). [In fact, I plan to use a couple passages of the book in my Essentials class next year, having the kids mark up a paragraph as if it were an IEW paper.]

I’m sharing my discussion notes. Obviously, there will be spoilers if you haven’t read the book! And just because something is in our discussion notes, doesn’t make it “the right answer.” Literature is open to interpretation. That’s what makes it so interesting!

Characters

Asta’s Son/Crispin, Bear (Asta, Father Quinel, John Aycliffe, Lord Furnival, Widow Daventry, John Ball)

Plot

Conflict

Asta’s son needed a name, the ability to make decisions, a friend, freedom, a life, a soul, joy.

Climax

Chapter 51, p 222

“As time passed in the darkness of my hiding place, the one thing I knew for sure was that as Bear had helped to free me, he had given me life. Therefore I resolved to help free him—even if it cost me that new life to do so.”

[We took some time to define specific vs. universal (plot is specific, theme is universal).]

Themes

[It would be fun to go through the book using highlighters for different themes.]

Naming (absence of being)

p 21 “O Great and Giving Jesus, I, who have no name, who am nothing, who does not know what to do, who is all along in Thy world, I who am full of sin, I implore Thy blessed help, or I’m undone.”

Becoming (his own person, making decisions, gaining a soul)

p 39 “I need to do as I was told.”

p 52 “I, who had never really had to make important choices about anything—now I had to decide everything for myself. The result was that I stayed where I was…In faith, I did not know how to do otherwise.”

p 82 “’I have no choice,’ I said.
’Would you like one?’
’God’s will be done,’I said.”

p 104 “’Think what you might become if you were cleansed of thirteen years of dirt, neglect, and servitude.’”

p 106 “’Then surely you can sing no less than they for you have a soul.’
’Sometimes…I think I have none…I have…never felt it.’”

p 138 “Perhaps it was time for me to make the decision for myself.”

p 171 “I made up my mind to leave the town…While it was easy to make the decision…”

p 221 “The only question was, now that I knew who I was, what should I do?”

Freedom (not bondage)

p 97 “Lose your sorrows, and you’ll find your freedom.”

Relationships (greater than station in life)

Free will to lay down life, sacrificing

Power corrupts (venom)

p 221 “He was shielding me from the poison in my blood.”

p 222 “I saw it then: Bear and Ball were talking about the very word Father Quinel had used, freedom. Something I had never had. Nor did anyone in my village, or the other villages through which we had passed. We lived in bondage. To be a Furnival was to be part of that bondage.”

Love, Trust

p. 73 “’You needn’t be so resentful,’ he said. ‘When you’ve lived as much as I, you’ll learn to neither trust nor love any mortal. Then, the only one who can betray your is yourself.”

p 88 “As God in Heaven knows, both wheat and trust take a full season to grow.”

p 138 “Though I was excited by Bear’s promise, I was very nervous. Should I or should I not trust him?”

p 207 “Yet I had little hope that it would bring either comfort or release for my one true friend.”

Life and Death

p 1 [Opening words] “’In the midst of life comes death.’ How often did our village priest preach those words. Yet I have also heard that ‘in the midst of death comes life.’ If this be a riddle, so was my life.”

p 12 “Thus our lives never changed, but went round the rolling years beneath the starry vault of distant Heaven. Time was the great millstone, which ground us to dust like kerneled wheat…Birth and death alone gave distinction to our lives…”

p 97 “Living by answers is a form of death. It’s only questions that keep you living.”

p 148 “As for doors, I did not think the world had so many. These people, I thought, must live their lives by little more than entries and exits.”

p 221 “How odd, I though: it had taken my mother’s death, Father Quinel’s murder, and the desire of others to kill me for me to claim a life of my own. But what kind of life?”

All themes come to a head at the climax (quote above under plot) and the last paragraph (resolution) of the book. [sob]

 

Issue:

Whether Crispin should have risked his life and forfeited his birthright to save Bear

5 Common Topics

Definition

[We defined Crispin twice—unnamed and named.]

Asta’s Son

not slaves but neither free

villeins-serfs, bound to Furnival

worked land (farmers)

13 year old boy

couldn’t read or write

Christian

had no name, was nothing, doesn’t know what to do, all alone, “full of sin”

orphan, homeless, friendless

“Wolf’s head” wanted outlaw, others free to kill him

couldn’t make choices or decisions

Crispin

illegitimate son of Lord Furnival

still an orphan (13, Christian)

has Bear = master/friend/father

on the run

forced servant-hood then bound apprentice (not free)

Bear sets him free after Crispin saved his life and sacrificed title

member of the Guild of Free Men

feels like a true son

makes decisions on his own and trusts

Bear

man, physically large, red beard

Age 12-19: enrolled @ abbey to be monk, learned to read and write

Age 20-30ish: ran off with mummers (performers), learned music, tricks, and laughter

Aged 30ish: became soldier. learned survival skills/fighting

Later used knowledge and experience from all 3 to become spy

Then master, friend, and father to Crispin

split hat of jester symbolized his two natures: jest/anger, good/bad

We also defined the term “father.” Lord Furnival fit the objective definition, and Bear fit the subjective definition.

Comparison

We compared the terms serf, servant, and apprentice because Crispin was all three over the course of the story.

Similarities: They are all bound but not slaves.

Differences: Serfs and servants are so for lifetime; apprenticeships are so for a period of years

Serf and servant positions were involuntary; apprenticeships were supposed to be voluntary.

Serfs usually worked the land, servants had a variety of possible tasks, and apprentices learned skills or trades.

All three usually had meager, miserable livelihoods, but apprentices could eventually be free and have a chance at a better life.

We also compared Crispin, Amos from Amos Fortune, Free Man, Nat from Carry On, Mr. Bowditch, and Robin from The Door in the Wall (all Challenge A literature selections).

Similarities: They were all boys. They all were faced with pivotal decisions to make around the age of 12-14 that changed the course of their lives. They made brave and honorable decisions. They took responsibility for their own lives and made sacrifices.

Differences: Crispin and Robin lived in England during the Middle Ages. Nat lived in America in colonial times and Amos lived in America during the time of slavery.

Crispin, Amos, and Robin all had stigmas attached to them, but they were different kinds (illegitimate child, African race, crippled). Nat had none.

Circumstance

England, 1377. Just after the plague.

Lord Furnival died.

Bear was being held in the dungeon of the Furnival palace.

The affirmative answer is possible (because Crispin succeeded in the end). Crispin said he had to try even if he couldn’t succeed. (p 231)

Relationship

We talked about the relationship between Bear and Crispin. Bear was Crispin’s master, father figure, protector, friend, provider, and teacher/mentor.

And then we talked about Crispin’s relationship to Lord Furnival in comparison. (Biological father, but he cast them out.)

What happened immediately before: Crispin warned the men that Aycliffe was coming. Bear helped save Crispin and the other men. Bear was captured.

What happened immediately afterward: Crispin rescued Bear. Aycliffe was killed in the fight at the town gates after going back on his word. Crispin left his cross with Aycliffe’s body, fulfilling his vow.

What caused the circumstances: Aycliffe captured Bear to get to Crispin because Crispin’s birth threatened Lady Furnival’s position.

Testimony/Authority

Who was an authority within the story? Who had something to say about the issue?

Bear told Crispin to leave the city because it was Crispin they wanted. Bear was an authority (master/father) in Crispin’s life. He was a trustworthy authority.

Widow Daventry told Crispin to leave town and never return. She said that his noble blood was poison. She said the connection gave him no honor or position. She said he would be used by Lord Douglas. She said his noble blood would cause a warrant for his arrest. She was an adult authority with life experience. She knew his situation and was trustworthy.

ANI

Negative

Crispin was only a 13 year old boy
He was a wolf’s head and Aycliffe wanted to kill him
He was an illegitimate child
Bear forced Crispin into bondage
It wasn’t fair for Crispin to have to give up who he was just when he had realized it
Bear was not related to him
Crispin was risking his freedom
There were no other heirs to the Furnival line
Title could have provided ease of life
He could have gone to his mother’s father, taken the title, and then tried to rescue Bear
It was terrifying
It was dangerous
Widow Daventry told him to leave town
Bear told him to leave town
Bear didn’t want him in danger
Bear could already have been dead
Widow D. already made arrangements for Crispin to escape
Bear chose to take the risk of being a spy
Crispin was doing exactly what John Aycliffe wanted him to do
It was a trap
Crispin was outnumbered
Crispin had no one to help him

Affirmative (with preliminary sorting)

1. Relationship with Bear
Bear father figure
One true friend
Bear master
Bear saved his life (more than once)
Loved Bear

2. Needed Bear
Bear was teaching him skills
Protecting
Providing
Crispin had no one else

3. Character Development
Brave
Selfless
Self-sacrifice turns boys into men
Taking responsibility
Learning how to make decisions
Honorable
Take charge of destiny

4. Bear’s Qualities
Bear deserved to be saved
Bear was helping peasants in his role as spy
Bear helped others escape before he was captured

5. Technical
It was possible
Crisping was able-bodied
Crispin was the only one who could
Crispin had something to bargain with
Crispin’s decision was made in free will

6. Anti-title
Being part of the Furnival name meant participating in bondage
Noble blood was poison
He would have been used by Lord Douglas if he had tried to claim inheritance

7. Cause/Effect
He needed to save Bear from further torture and death
It was Crispin’s fault that Bear was taken as a prisoner
John Aycliffe was killed in the skirmish

Interesting (not as many as we should have, but most of our “interesting” points were already in our notes)

Bear seemed mean at first and forced Crispin into bondage
Bear was captured while in the service of the Freeman’s Guild
The plague was over
Why did Crispin leave the cross with the dead body of Aycliffe?
Crispin forced Aycliffe at knife-point to make a promise, just as Bear did to him
Crispin gained awareness of his soul

 

I think that about wraps up what I have written. I always feel as if we’re just scratching the surface of what we discussed and what is possible to discuss!

You can read another parent’s Crispin discussion notes and ANI at this link.

I’ll share the essay when it is completed next week.