Thursday, September 16, 2004

how does this rhetoric accentuate my figure?

that's right, kids--it's the moment you've all been waiting for. drumroll please...and today's rhetorical figure is...

HYPERBATON: violation of the usual order of words. for examples of this, read ANYTHING by ausonius or paulinus of nola. an example in english might be: 'read this really to letter hard is' instead of 'this letter is really hard to read'. to put a normal english sentence into hyperbaton, i recommend that you simply think about the sentence for a moment, then think about what it would sound like if yoda said it, and then write that down.

1 comment:

Eric said...

very interesting bit of quintilian. it has been my understanding that hyperbaton is intentionally employed for rhetorical effect, while solecism is accidental and get belie a certain provinciality (as in augustine's case), which in turn might subject one to scorn.