Cosmos and Classical Conversations Essentials (Writing)

Previous posts in this series:

• Introduction
• Math
• Grammar

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“[S]ome artists look at the world around them and see chaos, and instead of discovering cosmos, they reproduce chaos, on canvas, in music, in words. As far as I can see, the reproduction of chaos is neither art, nor is it Christian.”

[Madeleine L’Engle, Walking on Water]

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The art, the cosmos, of writing—this is where language (the 2018 Classical Conversations Practicum theme), rhetoric (the third art of the trivium), and community (the third “C” of “Classical Christian Community”) all come together.

Rhetoric (speaking, writing, creating, communicating) is incarnational, an embodied idea.

“[T]o paint a picture or to write a story or to compose a song is an incarnational activity.” [Madeleine L’Engle, Walking on Water]

“What’s the point of ideas if those ideas are never made flesh?” [N.D. Wilson, The Rhetoric Companion]

“Rhetoric is a productive art, the principled process of making a product.” [Scott Crider]

Rhetoric is an art of the trivium.

Grammar, Dialectic, RHETORIC
Memory, Thought, SPEECH
Naming, Contemplating, CREATING
Finding, Collecting, COMMUNICATING
Knowledge, Understanding, WISDOM
What, Why, WHETHER

We participate in the Imago Dei through these human activities.

Rhetoric is an art we practice in community with others.

“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.” [Scott Crider]

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How does the art of rhetoric apply to the writing component (IEW) of Essentials? And how does it create a bridge to the Challenge program?

The Art of Rhetoric

• Invention  (What)
• Arrangement  (In What Order)
• Elocution  (How)
• Memory
• Delivery

Institute for Excellence in Writing “IEW” (Essentials)

• Source Texts/KWO  (What)
• ‘Structure’  (In What Order)
• ‘Style’  (How)
• _______
• Reading Papers Aloud

Lost Tools of Writing “LTW” (Challenge)

• 5 Common Topics  (What)
• Persuasive Essay  (In What Order)
• Schemes and Tropes  (How)
• _______
• Presenting Papers

** IEW prepares students for Challenge by introducing them to structure and style. Challenge students move on to LTW, but they will use their IEW research essay skills for their many science papers in Challenge A and B as well as the story sequence skills for their short story in Challenge B.

Essentials Writing (IEW)

Order:

PARAGRAPH

Essay/Report

Intro
Topics
Conclusion

Story

Setting, Characters
Conflict, Plot
Climax, Resolution

(Grammar concerns itself with the form of sentences, and we put those sentences together in writing to create the form of paragraphs, which then form essays and stories.)

Beauty:

Vocabulary
Dress-Ups
Decorations

Order + Beauty = COSMOS!

Writing Quotes

“In art, the Trinity is expressed in the Creative Idea, the Creative Energy, and the Creative Power—the first imagining of the work, then the making incarnate of the work, and third the meaning of the work…” [Madeleine L’Engle in the Introduction to Dorothy Sayer’s The Mind of the Maker, which compares the making of art (particularly writing) to the Trinity in metaphorical terms. The Trinity being Book-as-Thought (Father), Book-as-Written (Incarnate Son), and Book-as-Read (Holy Spirit). Dorothy Sayers is the author of the essay ‘The Lost Tools of Learning.’]

“The pen indeed is mightier than the sword, for it is in written word that we do most powerfully preserve that which is noble and expose that which is evil. And so in great part, the very future of society rests with those who can write, and write well.” [Andrew Pudewa of IEW]

“The discovered matter has to be shaped, given form. Organization gives form to the argumentative matter, providing a beginning, a middle, and an end to the small universe of the essay. The ordered substance must them be communicated through the medium of style, the words and sentences that carry the reader through that small universe.” [Scott Crider, The Office of Assertion] [Invention, Arrangement (structure), Elocution (style). Form! Order and Beauty! Universe = Cosmos]

“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 which may influence their actions.” Through this “office of assertion,” the writer is a leader of souls… Rhetoric is “the art of soul-leading by means of words.” …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… The purpose… is to teach… how to live within such a community with words so full of care that they release the light of brilliance.” [Scott Crider] [Rhetoric! Words! Community! Loving thy neighbor!]

“Variety pleases. And a pleased reader is more attentive to an argument than a bored one, more likely convinced that the time spent inside the cosmos of your essay will be worth the time… A writer who fulfills his or her obligation to please the reader with variety persuades the reader that the reading is time well spend making the sun run.” [Scott Crider] [Beauty! Loving thy neighbor!]

“Play with words. Juggle them. Write them down. Roll in them. Bake them into cookies. Quote them. Remember them. And such richness in the vocabulary of discourse does accumulate.” [Wilson, The Rhetoric Companion]

Why Liberal Arts?

“All liberal arts, in both the sciences and the humanities, are animated by the fundamental human desire to know, the fulfillment of which is a good, even if it provides no economic or political benefit whatsoever. An education for economic productivity and political utility alone is an education for slaves, but an education for finding, collecting, and communicating reality is an education for free people, people free to know what is so.” [Scott Crider] [The Trivium is for people who are free to know truth!]

Cosmos and Classical Conversations Essentials (Grammar)

“Grammar is where God, man, the soul, thinking, knowledge, and the Cosmos all come together.”

[Andrew Kern]

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COSMOS ~ Order and Beauty

Cosmos and Math

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We use LANGUAGE to think about and communicate IDEAS.

We use GRAMMAR to think about and communicate IDEAS about LANGUAGE.

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** Grammar prepares Challenge students for the study of Latin.

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Essentials English Grammar (Essentials of the English Language (EEL))

GRAMMAR FLOW CHART:

• Letters and Sounds [The smallest building blocks of our English language are the 26 letters. Letters and combinations of letters represent sounds called phonograms. The EEL guide includes spelling rules and lists for at-home use, but they are not used in Essentials class.]
  
  
• Words [We use letters to create words. Words are magic! We use vivid and precise words to think about and communicate ideas clearly. Essentials students are introduced to and encouraged to use new vivid and precise vocabulary during the writing (IEW) portion of class.]

We might have a million words in English, but we have only 8 Parts of Speech! (Noun, Pronoun, Verb, Adverb, Conjunction, Interjection, Preposition, Adjective). Dionysus Thrax, a Greek who lived in 100 BC, was the first to categorize words into parts of speech. This is not a modern idea, and it doesn’t apply only to English! Not only are there only 8 parts of speech, but there are only 2 main parts of speech (noun and verb) and the other parts modify and support them.

• Phrases and Clauses [We put words together to create phrases and clauses.]
  
  
• Independent and Dependent Clauses [Clauses contain both a subject and verb. We have two types of clauses. An independent clause contains a complete thought, and every sentence contains at least one independent clause.]
  
  
• SENTENCES [Sentences are the FORM of grammar!]

Every sentence has five parts. (Subject, Verb/Predicate, Capital Letter, End Mark, Complete Sense/Thought)

All sentences have structure (4: simple, compound, complex or compound-complex),
purpose (4: declarative, exclamatory, interrogative, or imperative),
and pattern (there are 7 different patterns, but every pattern contains a subject and a verb).

This means that we have 112 different possible combinations!

Grammar Quotes

“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).” [Andrew Kern]

“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.” [Michael Clay Thompson of MCT Language Arts] [Form! Beauty!]

“We study grammar because a knowledge of sentence-structure is an aid in the interpretation of literature; because continual dealing with sentences influences the student to form better sentences in his own composition; and because grammar is the best subject in our course of study for the development of reasoning power.” [William Frank Webster, The Teaching of English Grammar, Houghton, 1905]

Why do we study English grammar?

1. Interpretation

2. Composition

3. Reasoning

4. God revealed himself in human language.

“….God humbled himself not only in the incarnation of the Son, but also in the inspiration of the Scriptures. He bound his divine Son to human nature, and he bound his divine meaning to human words. The manger and the cross were not sensational. Neither are grammar and syntax. But that is how God chose to reveal himself. A poor Jewish peasant and a prepositional phrase have this in common: they are both human and both ordinary. That the poor peasant was God and prepositional phrase is the Word of God does not change this fact. Therefore, if God humbled himself to take on human flesh and to speak human language, woe to us if we arrogantly presume to ignore the humanity of Christ and the grammar of Scripture.” [John Piper, Reading the Bible Supernaturally]

“Language is the house of being. In its home man dwells.” [Martin Heideggar]

“Where language is weak, theology is weakened.” [Madeleine L’Engle, Walking on Water]

“We think because we have words, not the other way around. The more words we have, the better able we are to think conceptually.” [L’Engle]

“We cannot Name or be Named without language.” [L’Engle]

“When language is limited, I am thereby diminished.” [L’Engle]

“I now regularly meet students who have never heard the names of most English authors who lived before 1900. That includes Milton, Chaucer, Pope, Wordsworth, Byron, Keats, Tennyson, and Yeats. Poetry has been largely abandoned. Their knowledge of English grammar is spotty at best and often nonexistent. That is because grammar, as its own subject worthy of systematic study, has been abandoned. Those of my students who know some grammar took Latin in high school or were taught at home. The writing of most students is irreparable in the way that aphasia is. You cannot point to a sentence and say, simply, “Your verb here does not agree with your subject.” That is not only because they do not understand the terms of the comment. It is also because many of their sentences will have no clear subject or verb to begin with. The students make grammatical errors for which there are no names. Their experience of the written language has been formed by junk fiction in school, text messages, blog posts, blather on the airwaves, and the bureaucratic sludge that they are taught for “formal” writing, and that George Orwell identified and skewered seventy years ago. The best of them are bad writers of English; the others write no language known to man.” [Anthony Esolen (author of Ten Ways to Destroy the Imagination of Your Child), Exercises in Unreality: The Decline of Teaching Western Civilization]

“[Sentence diagramming] was a bit like art, a bit like mathematics. It was much more than words uttered, or words written on a piece of paper: it was a picture of language.” [Kitty Burns Florey, author of Sister Bernadette’s Barking Dog: The Quirky History and Lost Art of Diagramming Sentences]

Cosmos and Classical Conversations Essentials (Intro)

I was asked to lead a local Classical Conversations Essentials Academic Orientation this past month. I have spent three years in Essentials class as a parent and another three years as a tutor (and parent), but this was my first opportunity to lead Tutor Orientation at a CC Practicum.

As I was preparing to lead the orientation and then spending time in discussion with the tutors and directors during the orientation, I was reminded (again) why I love Essentials.

It is the class in which students are beginning to play with Cosmos. They are learning FORM.

I’ve written about some of these ideas before, after speaking at the math practicum and then as I was preparing to tutor Essentials the first year, but I re-organized my notes to correspond with the three elements of an Essentials class: math, English grammar, and writing. I’ll be sharing these thoughts in a 4-part series, beginning with this introduction.

“Cosmos” is the thread that ran through the three days of training and connects all three class elements together.

Let’s begin here.

A cosmos is an orderly, harmonious system or “world.” The word derives from the Greek word “kosmos,” meaning “order” or “ornament.” Cosmos is diametrically opposed to the concept of chaos. 

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 = World

(We’re really starting at the very beginning, here.)

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. And once the form established, he 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 story

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

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In Classical Conversations communities, Essentials students are learning the FORM of three arts.

Math: Learning the Form of Numbers, Operations, Laws

Grammar: Learning the Form of Sentences

Writing: Learning the Form of Paragraphs (Reports, Stories, Essays, and Critiques)

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Orient and Invite

As tutor trainers, tutors, parents, and fellow students, we have the opporunity to “orient and invite.”

Orient Our Tutors, Parents, and Students to Essentials and the Arts of Math, Grammar, and Writing 

Review Past Concepts

Introduce New Grammar

Invite Our Tutors, Parents, and Students to the Conversation

Begin Dialectic Discussion in Class

Point to Available Resources

Continue Grammar and Dialectic Discussion at Home

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May I invite you along on my learning journey?

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“The reason you study math, science and art is so that your imagination will be filled with wonder and awe at the Creator of the most mind blowing project ever: the world. And whether you are learning to read music or playing an instrument, whether your hand is holding a pencil or gesturing in the theater, you are training yourself for the warfare of worship. You are teaching your body gratitude; you are teaching your soul thanksgiving. There is hardly an adequate evaluation of your progress, but the best grade you can receive is the outworking of a thankful heart. If you have truly learned Algebra, if you have mastered the story of Western Civilization, if you can tell me the names of the constellations that whirl about our heads, then you will do it with laughter in your voice, you will do it with joy in your heart and gratitude in your bones. Worship is the point of learning because worship is the point of life.” Toby Sumpter, in response to the questions ‘Why are you in school? Why are you reading this page? Why are you reading Mein Kampf?’ This is an excerpt from Veritas Press’s Omnibus III Textbook.

Words

Language is magic.

If I say a word, an image or idea from my mind magically appears in yours. For instance, I can say (or write) the word "house," and the image/idea of house appears in your mind. But the house in your mind may look very little like the house in mine. What if I add vivid modifiers to the word house? With each modifier, the image in your mind more closely resembles the one in mine. Brick. Two-story. Colonial.

Alternatively, I can replace the word house with a more precise noun, the definition of which includes the idea of house + modifiers. Chalet. Mansion. Cottage. Yurt. Nest. Now a single word from my mind builds a vivid, precise image in yours.

Do you know how many words we have in the English language? Depending on the qualifications of "word," we have between 200,000 and a million words in English.

We use language to think about and communicate ideas.

The more words I know, the better able I am to think and reason abstractly. The more words you and I share, the better able we are to communicate, vividly and precisely.

Yesterday, my young son was feeling emotional about something. I asked him if he was concerned. He said no, that wasn't accurate. Stressed? Distressed? Worried? Apprehensive? On edge? No, those weren't strong enough. Panicked was the word that best communicated his emotions.

Give yourself the gift of language. Give your children the gift of language. Give your community and culture the gift of members who can communicate with others in a vivid, precise way. With knowledge, understanding, and wisdom. And heaps of grace.

Thanksgiving Parallelism

A Thanksgiving celebration of parallelism by Robert Louis Stevenson:

"Lord, behold our family here assembled. We thank Thee

for this place in which we dwell;
for the love that unites us;
for the peace accorded us this day;
for the hope with which we expect the morrow;
for the health,
     the work,
     the food, and
     the bright skies, that make our lives delightful;
for our friends in all parts of the earth, and
     our friendly helpers in this foreign isle.

Let peace abound in our small company.
Purge out of every heart the lurking grudge.
Give us grace and strength to forbear and to persevere.

Offenders, give us the grace to accept and to forgive offenders.
Forgetful ourselves, help us to bear cheerfully the forgetfulness of others.

Give us

courage and
gaiety and
the quiet mind.

Spare to us our friends,
soften to us our enemies.

Bless us,

if it may be, in all our innocent endeavours.
If it may not, give us the strength to encounter that which is to come, that we be

brave in peril,
constant in tribulation,
temperate in wrath,

and in all changes of fortune,
and, down to the gates of death, loyal and loving one to another.

As the clay to the potter,
as the windmill to the wind,
as children of their sire,

we beseech of Thee this help and mercy for Christ’s sake."

The Call of the Wild ~ Poetic Parallelism

 

I’ve written about parallelism in the past. It’s powerful and poetic (and picturesque). After finishing The Call of the Wild by Jack London, I am compelled to compose a complete post with copious quotes from this conspicuous narrative. [Oh, wait. This is a post about parallelism, not alliteration.]

The Call of the Wild is an excellent introduction to classic literature for older kids. It’s a fairly short and simple story (my copy has 134 pages with a fair amount of white space), but the themes are more complex than most children’s books and the vocabulary is rich and varied. For example, London manages to squeeze two of my favorite words into a short sentence:

“And so it went, the inexorable elimination of the superfluous.”

As I was reading, I noticed that London used parallelism prolifically in this novel. Because parallelism is a prominent skill taught in The Lost Tools of Writing as well as the building block of many literary devices, students should be on the lookout for examples in their own reading.

The Call of the Wild is a literature selection for the Classical Conversations Challenge 1 program, so it is a handy example for Challenge students. Let’s explore a few instances of parallelism in this novel.

Among the terriers he stalked imperiously, and Toots and Ysabel he utterly ignored, for he was king—king over all the creeping, crawling, flying things of Judge Miller’s place, humans included. [three present participial adjectives]

Manuel had one besetting sin. He loved to play Chinese lottery. Also, in his gambling, he had one besetting weakness—faith in a system; and this made his damnation certain. [anaphora (the repetition of “Manuel/he had one besetting____”)]

Here was neither peace, nor rest, nor a moment’s safety. [emphasis on the 3rd noun with the addition of an article and possessive adjective]

The day had been long and arduous, and he slept soundly and comfortably, though he growled and barked and wrestled with bad dreams. [two adjectives, two adverbs, then emphasis on the third with three verbs]

This first theft marked Buck as fit to survive in the hostile Northland environment. It marked his adaptability, his capacity to adjust himself to changing conditions, the lack of which would have meant swift and terrible death. It marked further decay or going to pieces of his moral nature, a vain thing and a handicap in the ruthless struggle for existence. [Three clauses (subject, verb, direct object) with anaphora (the repetition of “theft/it marked” at the beginning of each clause)]

Their irritability arose out of their misery, increased with it, doubled upon it, outdistanced it*. The wonderful patience of the trail which comes to men who toil hard and suffer sore, and remain sweet of speech and kindly+, did not come to these to men and the woman. They had no inkling of such a patience. They were stiff and in pain; their muscles ached, their bones ached, their very hearts ached^; and because of this they became sharp of speech, and hard words were first on their lips in the morning and last at night. [*emphasis on third without preposition, +emphasis on third with extra words “of speech and kindly,” ^emphasis on third with “very”]

All things were thawing, bending, snapping. [three present progressive verbs]

And amid all this bursting, rending, throbbing of awakening life, under the blazing sun and through the soft-sighing breezes, like wayfarers to death, staggered the two men, the woman, and the huskies. [three gerunds, three nouns]

With the dogs falling, Mercedes weeping and riding, Hal swearing innocuously, and Charles’s eyes wistfully watering, they staggered into John Thornton’s camp at the mouth of White River. [one gerund, two gerunds, gerund/adverb, adverb/gerund—love the alliteration of “wistfully watering” (and “with,” “weeping,” and “White”)]

Mercedes screamed, cried, laughed, and manifested the chaotic abandonment of hysteria. [four “-ed” verbs, emphasis on the last as it continues with a vivid direct object]

But love that was feverish and burning, that was adoration, that was madness, it had taken John Thornton to arouse. [anaphora (“that was…”), the first clause has a predicate adjective, the second two have predicate nominatives]

And when, released, he sprang to his feet, his mouth laughing, his eyes eloquent, his throat vibrant with unuttered sounds, and in that fashion remained without movement, John Thornton would reverently exclaim, ‘God, you can all but speak!’ [anaphora (“his” repeated each time); so poetic with the adjective following the noun]

He sat by John Thornton’s fire, a broad-breasted dog, white-fanged and long-furred; but behind him were the shades of all manner of dogs, half-wolves and wild wolves, urgent and prompting, tasting the savour of the meat he ate, thirsting for the water he drank, scenting the wind with him, listening with him and telling him the sounds made by the wild life in the forest, dictating his moods, directing his actions, lying down to sleep with him when he lay down, and dreaming with him and beyond him and becoming themselves the stuff of his dreams.

Strangling, suffocating, sometimes one uppermost and sometimes the other, dragging over the jagged bottom, smashing against rocks and snags, they veered in to the bank. [two present participles, two “sometimes____” phrases, two present participles + prepositional phrases]

They went across divides in summer blizzards, shivered under the midnight sun on naked mountains between the timber line and the eternal snows, dropped into summer valleys amid swarming gnats and flies, and in the shadows of glaciers picked strawberries and flowers as ripe and fair as any the Southland could boast. [past tense verb + two prepositional phrases, past tense verb + three prepositional phrases (last with compound object), past tense verb + two prepositional phrases (last with compound object) (all objects of prepositions in first three phrases have adjectives), but emphasis placed on the last phrase by switching order and starting with prepositional phrase and ending with past tense verb (and compound direct object)—so poetic!]

There is a patience of the wild—dogged, tireless, persistent as life itself—that holds motionless for endless hours the spider in its web, the snake in its coils, the panther in its ambuscade… [three adjectives, emphasis on the third with a simile; three nouns with prepositional phrases repeating “in its”]

…this patience belongs peculiarly to life when it hunts its living food; and it belonged to Buck as he clung to the flank of the herd, retarding its march, irritating the young bulls, worrying the cows with their half-grown calves, and driving the wounded bull mad with helpless rage. [present participles with direct objects, increasing intensity and adding words to each subsequent phrase]

As twilight fell the old bull stood with lowered head, watching his mates—the cows he had known, the calves he had fathered, the bulls he had mastered—as they shambled on at a rapid pace through the fading light. [three nouns with adjectival clauses, with repeated “he had”—very strong grammatical parallelism]

From then on, night and day, Buck never left his prey, never gave it a moment’s rest, never permitted it to browse the leaves of the trees or the shoots of young birch and willow. [three verb phrases with “never” repeated at the beginning of each (anaphora), each subsequent phrase getting longer]

The birds talked of it, the squirrels chattered about it, the very breeze whispered of it. [three clauses, grammatically parallel; interesting switch from “of” to “about” in the second clause, emphasis on third clause with addition of “very,” epistrophe (repetition of the word “it” at the end of the clauses)]

He plunged about in their very midst, tearing, rending, destroying… [three present participles]
Thenceforward he would be unafraid of them except when they bore in their hands their arrows, spears, and clubs. [three nouns]

One wolf, long and lean and gray, advanced cautiously… [three adjectives]

My Pet Verbal

It all started as a class joke. The word “verbal” is such a funny word, and it reminded us all of a gerbil. I told the students in my CC Essentials class that if I were ever to have a pet, it would be a verbal (because I’m not a pet person, but I sure do enjoy grammar).

On the last day of class, two of the girls came up to me with a gift. A box. With air holes. I got a little nervous. What sort of tutor gift did they get me?! Inside the first box was another box with air holes—a box labeled “verbal.” Yes, this is my kind of pet.

What is a verbal, you might ask? How does one care for a verbal? Luckily, my new pet verbal came with an informative—and downright hilarious—booklet. 

This is one gift I’ll treasure forever.

On Rhetoric ~ Socratic Dialogue 2 [Paul Harvey]

In my last post on the subject of formal rhetoric, I introduced you to the canons of rhetoric, the basic arrangement of a persuasive essay or speech, and the modes of persuasion. I’d like to focus on the modes of persuasion and a new topic (elocution) in this post.

Elocution pertains to the style in which you state your ideas. This includes word choice, sentence structure, and figures of speech.

“Parallelism is actually a “figure of speech,” a sentence pattern that varies the ordinary or conventional use of language. Figures come in two types, those which vary standard word order and those which vary standard word usage: a figure is either a scheme or a trope. If parallelism is the most important scheme, metaphor is the most important trope. Metaphor is like similie since both compare two items; a metaphor is an identity, however, where a similie is an analogy.” [Scott F. Crider, The Office of Assertion]

 

There are two main categories of figures of speech: schemes and tropes.

 

Schemes appeal to the senses.

These figures of speech have a pleasing or attention-grabbing sound to the ear. Many schemes use repetition of sounds or structure, rhyme or rhythm.

Alliteration is one of the most familiar schemes. It is the repetition of consonant sounds in close proximity, usually at the beginning of words. For example, J.R.R. Tolkien’s Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is loaded with alliteration in every line.

This king lay at Camelot at Christmas-tide
with many a lovely lord, lieges most noble,
indeed of the Table Round all those tried brethren,
amid merriment unmatched and mirth without care.
There tourneyed many a time the trusty knights,
and jousted full joyously these gentle lords;
then to the court they came at carols to play.

Assonance is the repetition of vowel sounds rather than consonant sounds.

Parallelism (about which I’ve written at length here and here) is the repetition of structure (words, phrases, or clauses), and many other schemes of repetition rely on parallelism.

For example:

Chiasmus is reverse repetition of a group of words, clauses, or sentences.

The mind is its own place, and in itself Can make a Heav’n of Hell, a Hell of Heav’n. [Milton, Paradise Lost]

Antithesis uses parallel structure to contrast opposing ideas.

Eloquent speakers give pleasure, wise ones salvation. [Augustine] (Eloquent vs wise and pleasure vs salvation)

Anaphora is the repetition of a word or a phrase at the beginning of clauses, lines, or sentences.

Out of the quarrel with others we make rhetoric, out of the quarrel with ourselves, poetry. [W. B. Yeats]

Epistrophe is the repetition of a word or phrase at the end of clauses, lines, or sentences.

Justice is the grammar of things. Mercy is the poetry of things. [Frederick Buechner]

 

Tropes appeal to the imagination.

These figures of speech twist the usual meaning of words and show resemblance. The two most common tropes are similie and metaphor.

A similie shows explicit resemblance and uses the words like or as.

A metaphor shows implicit resemblance by asserting that one thing is another thing.

 

We could continue on with symbolism, personification, onomatopeia, and more, but this is only a brief introduction. American Rhetoric is an excellent resource for definitions and examples of figures of speech if you want to learn more.

 

Elocution is related to the modes of persuasion, because the writer or speaker must keep his audience in mind when considering what style will be most appealing or persuasive.

Let’s quickly review the modes of persuasion before moving on to the practicum.

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.

 

Now it’s time for us to practice what we’ve learned using the following video:

 

 

 

Here’s an imperfect transcript to make discussion easier: 

And on the 8th day, God looked down on his planned paradise and said, "I need a caretaker." So God made a farmer.

God said, "I need somebody willing to get up before dawn, milk cows, work all day in the fields, milk cows again, eat supper and then go to town and stay past midnight at a meeting of the school board." So God made a farmer.

"I need somebody with arms strong enough to rustle a calf and yet gentle enough to deliver his own grandchild. Somebody to call hogs, tame cantankerous machinery, come home hungry, have to wait lunch until his wife's done feeding visiting ladies and tell the ladies to be sure and come back real soon -- and mean it." So God made a farmer.

God said, "I need somebody willing to sit up all night with a newborn colt. And watch it die. Then dry his eyes and say, 'Maybe next year.' I need somebody who can shape an ax handle from a persimmon sprout, shoe a horse with a hunk of car tire, who can make harness out of haywire, feed sacks and shoe scraps. And who, planting time and harvest season, will finish his forty-hour week by Tuesday noon, then, pain'n from 'tractor back,' put in another seventy-two hours." So God made a farmer.

God had to have somebody willing to ride the ruts at double speed to get the hay in ahead of the rain clouds and yet stop in mid-field and race to help when he sees the first smoke from a neighbor's place. So God made a farmer.

God said, "I need somebody strong enough to clear trees and heave bails, yet gentle enough to tame lambs and wean pigs and tend the pink-combed pullets, who will stop his mower for an hour to splint the broken leg of a meadow lark. It had to be somebody who'd plow deep and straight and not cut corners. Somebody to seed, weed, feed, breed and rake and disc and plow and plant and tie the fleece and strain the milk and replenish the self-feeder and finish a hard week's work with a five-mile drive to church.

“Somebody who'd bale a family together with the soft strong bonds of sharing, who would laugh and then sigh, and then reply, with smiling eyes, when his son says he wants to spend his life 'doing what dad does.'” So God made a farmer.

 

And now a few questions for you. (I’d love for you all to play along in the comments.)

Is this an example of a persuasive argument?

What is this particular video’s purpose?

In the end, who is trying to persuade an audience?

Of what?

Who is the intended audience?

Whose credibility do we consider? Does the video make an appeal based on credibility? How? By association?

Does this video make an appeal based on reason or logic? In what way?

Does this video appeal to the audience’s emotions? How?

Which mode of persuasion is the strongest? Why?

How is elocution—or style—used in this video?  What is the overall style of the presentation? Do you notice any figures of speech?

Do you think this video is persuasive? Why? What is most effective about it?

Any other thoughts?

 

[Spoiler alert. Grin.]

 

 

 

 

 

The recording is a speech originally delivered by Paul Harvey in 1978. This particular video is a Ram commercial from the 2013 Super Bowl. (Paul Harvey passed away in 2009.)

I indentified some of the figures of speech as examples.

Rhyme/rhythm: seed, weed, feed, breed

Assonance: “sigh, reply…smiling eyes”

Alliteration: “planned paradise,” “plow and plant,” “ride, ruts, race”

Parallelism (so many examples!) “clear trees, heave bails, tame lambs, wean pigs…” “tie the fleece and strain the milk and replenish the self-feeder and finish a hard week’s work,” “shape an ax handle from a persimmon sprout, shoe a horse with a hunk of car tire, make harness out of haywire…”

Anaphora: “God said, I need somebody”

Epistrophe: “So God made a farmer.”

Antitheses: “strong enough/gentle enough” and “heave bails/tame lambs”

Metaphor?: “bale a family together with the soft strong bonds of sharing” “plow deep and straight and not cut corners” (Is he just talking about plowing here?)

Foreshadowing: Images of Ram Trucks in film before identifying item being advertised

Did you notice any others?

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]

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.

Books for Word Lovers

:: Ox, House, Stick: The History of Our Alphabet

This delightful history of the alphabet belongs on every child’s book shelf next to The History of Counting (unattractive cover, but wonderful book) and About Time: A First Look at Time and Clocks. Ox, House, Stick details (with gobs of text and helpful, attractive illustrations) the history of our alphabet beginning with picture writing (Chinese, Sumerian, and Egyptian) and the various cultures from which we borrowed our alphabet (Rome, Greece, Phoenicia, Sinai Peninsula, and Egypt). The history of each letter of the English alphabet is then covered in surprising depth for a picture book! Tucked in with the history of each letter are short explanatory notes on topics such as the origin of the name “alphabet,” the order of the alphabet, consonants and vowels, reading left to right, writing materials, and Johannes Gutenberg.)

:: The Word Snoop

A step up from Ox, House, Stick, we have The Word Snoop. This is an illustrated chapter book that will enthrall any language-lover, young or old. Invent your own alphabet, find out why English is so strange, play games, crack codes, solve puzzles, and explore punctuation, anagrams, palindromes, oxymorons, puns, onomatopoeia, euphemisms, cliches, tautology, malapropisms, and so much more. My boys think this book is great fun!

:: The Right Word: Roget and his Thesaurus

Now that we have words, which one shall we use? The right one!

I can relate to Peter Roget. As a boy he loved books and he loved to write, but he didn’t write stories. He wrote lists! [My favorite assignment in my high school creative writing class was a list of things that made me smile.] Peter wrote lists of Latin words. Inspired by Linnaeus, Peter wrote lists of plants and animals. (Are you listening, CC students?) He saw Napoleon lead his troops through Paris. Peter (shy, though he was) had to give a presentation in front of a crowded room. He managed to speak “concisely, with clarity and conviction!” (Hello, alliteration!)

“In 1852, Roget published his Thesaurus, a word that means ‘treasure house’ in Greek.” Now everyone can find the right word whenever they need it!

This beautiful picture book is illustrated in a scrapbook style by one of my favorites, Melissa Sweet.

:: Enormous Smallness: A Story of E.E. Cummings

When the right words are put together, what do we have? creativity. poetry. magic.

In this gorgeous picture book, we meet e.e. cummings. E.E., Estlin, said his first poem at the age of three. His mother began writing down his poems.

“As Estlin grew, he drew many pictures from the great circus of his imagination. But even more than drawing elephants, trees, and birds, Estlin LOVED WORDS. What words say and how they sound and look. He loved the way them hum, buzz, pop, and swish.”

 

A grown-up word-lover on your list? Try this one:

:: Sister Bernadette's Barking Dog: The Quirky History and Lost Art of Diagramming Sentences

I can’t help it. Diagramming sentences is a blast. It’s a combination of word puzzle, language, logic, and art. What could be better? This book is an entertaining romp through the English language via the history of sentence diagramming and a wide variety of sentences (Groucho Marx, Lewis Carroll, Gertrude Stein, Henry James, Hemmingway, James Fenimore Cooper, Twain, Updike, Fitzgerald, and more).

“I do believe that clarity in speech and precision and consistency in writing will never cease to be important. Language exists so that we can communicate with each other, and surely it continues to be true that…we communicate better when we speak and write clearly, and that when we communicate better, we understand each other, and that when we understand each other, life in general is greatly improved.”

The Word

[Let’s consider this the third installment of my Language Love series that I haven’t yet finished.]

[Windhover Farm, if you’re reading this I just want to thank you for introducing me to Frederick Buechner. I know I didn’t care for Godric on the first reading, but I ended up purchasing this book of daily meditations from his writing and I adore it. Have you noticed that I’ve been quoting him often lately?]

I have been reading Listening to Your Life: Daily Meditations with Frederick Buechner for the past several months, and I’ve greatly enjoyed “hearing” Buechner’s voice on wide and varied topics. Each day’s entry is an excerpt from one of Buechner’s books, both fiction and non-fiction, but mostly non-fiction. This particular excerpt from Peculiar Treasures: A Biblical Who’s Who struck me and I want to share it with you. It is one of the longer entries (I’ve even slightly abridged it here); most are a page or less.

John was a poet, and he knew about words. He knew that all men and all women are mysteries known only to themselves until they speak a word that opens up the mystery. He knew that the words people speak have their life in them just as surely as they have their breath in them. He knew that the words people speak have dynamite in them and that a word may be all it takes to set somebody’s heart on fire or break it in two. He knew that words break silence and that the word that is spoken is the word that is heard and may even be answered. And at the beginning of his gospel he wrote a poem about the Word that God spoke.

When God speaks, things happen because the words of God aren’t just as good as his deeds, they are his deeds. When God speaks his word, John says, creation happens, and when God speaks to his creation, what comes out is not ancient Hebrew or the King James Version or a sentiment suitable for framing in a pastor’s study. On the contrary. “The word became flesh,” John says (1:14), and that means that when God wanted to say what God is all about and what man is all about and what life is all about, it wasn’t a sound that emerged but a man. Jesus was his name. He was dynamite. He was the Word of God.

As this might lead you to expect, the Gospel of John is as different from the other three as night from day. Matthew quotes Scripture, Mark lists miracles, Luke reels off parables, and each has his own special axe to grind too, but the one thing they all did in common was to say something also about the thirty-odd years Jesus lived on this earth, the kinds of things he did and said and what he got for his pains as well as what the world got for his pains too. John, on the other hand, clearly has something else in mind, and if you didn’t happen to know, you’d hardly guess that his Jesus and the Jesus of the other three gospels are the same man.

John says nothing about when or where or how he was born. He says nothing about how the baptist baptized him. There’s no account of the temptation in John, or the transfiguration, nothing about how he told people to eat bread and drink wine in his memory once in a while, or how he sweated blood in the garden the night they arrested him… Jesus doesn’t tell even a single parable in John. So what then, according to John, does Jesus do?

He speaks words. He speaks poems that sound much like John’s poems, and the poems are about himself. Even when he works his miracles, you feel he’s thinking less about the human needs of the people he’s working them for than about something else he’s got to say about who he is and what he’s there to get done. When he feeds a big, hungry crowd on hardly enough to fill a grocery bag, for instance, he says, “I am the bread of life. He who comes to me shall not hunger, and he who believes in me shall never thirst” (6:35). When he raises his old friend Lazarus from the dead, he says, “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and whoever lives and believes in me shall never die” (11:25-26). “I am the door,” he says, “and if any one enters by me, he will be saved” (10:1). “I am the good shepherd” (10:14), “the light of the world” (8:12)…

You miss the Jesus of Matthew, Mark, and Luke of course—the one who got mad and tired and took naps in boats. You miss the Jesus who healed people because he felt sorry for them and made jokes about camels squeezing through the eyes of needles… Majestic, mystical, aloof almost, the Jesus of the Fourth Gospel walks three feet off the ground, you feel, and you can’t help wishing that once in a while he’d come down to earth.

But that’s just the point, of course—John’s point. It’s not the Jesus people knew on earth that he’s mainly talking about…

He is Jesus as the Word that breaks the heart and sets the feet to dancing and stirs tigers in the blood. He is the Jesus John loved not just because he’d healed the sick and fed the hungry but because he’d saved the world. Jesus as the mot juste of God.

 

[The very next day’s entry is a total of one sentence: “A Glutton is one who raids the icebox for a cure for spiritual malnutrition.”]

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!