Grand style (rhetoric)

Last updated June 18, 2024

The grand style (also referred to as 'high style') is a style of rhetoric, notable for its use of figurative language and for its ability to evoke emotion. The term was coined by Matthew Arnold.^[1] It is mostly used in longer speeches and can be used, as by Cicero, to influence an audience around a particular belief or ideology. The style is highly ornamented with stylistic devices such as metaphors and similes, as well as the use of personification. In poetry, it adopts strict adherence to metre.^[2]

History

In ancient Greece, the 'grand style' of rhetoric was known as 'adros', and in Latin 'supra' or 'magniloquens'.^[3] It was made prominent by Roman authors such as Marcus Tullius Cicero. However, it was not confined to classical antiquity. As interest in the classics increased from the sixteenth century onwards in Britain its use gained acceptance. Poets such as William Shakespeare and John Milton both used the grand style.^[4] Augustine, notable for his On Christian Doctrine , expanded on Cicero's partition of the three styles by describing them as follows: the plain style is intended merely to be understood, the middle (or temperate) style is intended to be enjoyable to listen to and the grand style is intended to also be persuasive. The grand style incorporates all three, as it informs the audience of a concept, pleases through rhetorical devices and persuades via its eloquence.^[5]

Features

A common feature of rhetoric in the grand style is the use of a repeated pattern, often emphasizing a word or phrase; this can be in the form of anaphora (Greek for 'carrying back') whereby the beginning of a series of clauses are repeated:

In every cry of every man,
In every infant's cry of fear,
In every voice, in every ban,
The mind-forged manacles I hear:
—William Blake

The grand style may also feature epistrophe (Greek for 'return',^[6] also known as epiphoras or epiphora, 'to carry upon'^[7]), in which the end parts of clauses are emphasized:

Where affections bear rule, their reason is subdued, honesty is subdued, good will is subdued, and all things else that withstand evil for ever are subdued.
— Thomas Wilson

In poetry, the grand style may feature a rhyming couplet, whereby the last two lines of a section rhyme. This creates a sense of control by the narrator of the poem or speaker in the play. Formal, ornamented language is used, while slang and vulgarity are avoided. Verbs are often used in the imperative form, with the goal of swaying an audience. This form of speech has long been considered to be the peak of rhetorical skill, and many past pieces are still studied.^[2]^[8]

Cicero

Cicero described the style's positive and negative effects. He commented on the eloquence and drive behind it, as well as the passion that it can convey to an audience. He noted how it held great emotional power over an audience and could be used to rally listeners to a cause.^[2]

However, he found danger in using the style. If the audience was not sufficiently prepared for a major speech, he claimed that it would appear as if the speaker were inebriated. He believed it necessary for a speaker to fully appreciate the two other styles—plain and middle—used respectively for 'teaching' and for 'pleasing'. He claimed that without the understanding all three, the potential of the grand style could never be realized.^[2]

Matthew Arnold

Matthew Arnold, an English poet and cultural critic, described what he termed the grand style in a series of lectures he gave: On Translating Homer. He described the grand style as difficult to render, arguing this fact as evidence of the Iliad having been written entirely by Homer. He said that rather than by tangible features, the style could only be discerned spiritually. He linked the grand style, as used by Homer, to what he called the nobility of the verse. What Homer has done, according to Arnold, is to employ successfully the grand style in 'prosaic subjects'. Along with Homer, he cites Virgil, Dante, Milton, Sophocles and Pindar all as having used the grand style in their respective works.^[9]

He argued that there were only two forms of verse capable of achieving the grand style. The first, he said, was heroic couplet or blank verse (The former consists of pairs of rhymed lines, while the latter is unrhymed. Both comprise lines ten syllables long, typically in iambic pentameter.^[10]) The second form he stated was dactylic hexameter (the form employed by Homer and Virgil).^[9]

Related Research Articles

Rhetoric is the art of persuasion. It is one of the three ancient arts of discourse (trivium) along with grammar and logic/dialectic. As an academic discipline within the humanities, rhetoric aims to study the techniques that speakers or writers use to inform, persuade, and motivate their audiences. Rhetoric also provides heuristics for understanding, discovering, and developing arguments for particular situations.

A figure of speech or rhetorical figure is a word or phrase that intentionally deviates from ordinary language use to produce a rhetorical effect. Figures of speech are traditionally classified into schemes, which vary the ordinary sequence of words, and tropes, where words carry a meaning other than what they ordinarily signify.

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In rhetoric, chiasmus or, less commonly, chiasm, is a "reversal of grammatical structures in successive phrases or clauses – but no repetition of words".

In rhetoric, litotes, also known classically as antenantiosis or moderatour, is a figure of speech and form of irony in which understatement is used to emphasize a point by stating a negative to further affirm a positive, often incorporating double negatives for effect. Litotes is a form of understatement, which can be in the form of meiosis, and is always deliberate with the intention of emphasis. However, the interpretation of negation may depend on context, including cultural context. In speech, litotes may also depend on intonation and emphasis; for example, the phrase "not bad" can be intonated differently so as to mean either "mediocre" or "excellent". Along the same lines, litotes can be used, to euphemistically provide emphasis by diminishing the harshness of an observation; "He isn't the cleanest person I know" could be used as a means of indicating that someone is a messy person.

In rhetoric, a rhetorical device, persuasive device, or stylistic device is a technique that an author or speaker uses to convey to the listener or reader a meaning with the goal of persuading them towards considering a topic from a perspective, using language designed to encourage or provoke an emotional display of a given perspective or action. They seek to make a position or argument more compelling than it would otherwise be.

In rhetoric, an anaphora is a rhetorical device that consists of repeating a sequence of words at the beginnings of neighboring clauses, thereby lending them emphasis. In contrast, an epistrophe is repeating words at the clauses' ends. The combination of anaphora and epistrophe results in symploce.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kenneth Burke</span> American philosopher and literary critic (1897–1993)

Kenneth Duva Burke was an American literary theorist, as well as poet, essayist, and novelist, who wrote on 20th-century philosophy, aesthetics, criticism, and rhetorical theory. As a literary theorist, Burke was best known for his analyses based on the nature of knowledge. Further, he was one of the first individuals to stray from more traditional rhetoric and view literature as "symbolic action."

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Parallelism is a rhetorical device that compounds words or phrases that have equivalent meanings so as to create a definite pattern. This structure is particularly effective when "specifying or enumerating pairs or series of like things". A scheme of balance, parallelism represents "one of the basic principles of grammar and rhetoric".

Owing to its origin in ancient Greece and Rome, English rhetorical theory frequently employs Greek and Latin words as terms of art. This page explains commonly used rhetorical terms in alphabetical order. The brief definitions here are intended to serve as a quick reference rather than an in-depth discussion. For more information, click the terms.

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<i>De Oratore</i> Dialogue by Cicero, 55BCE

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A literary trope is the use of figurative language, via word, phrase or an image, for artistic effect such as using a figure of speech. Keith and Lundburg describe a trope as "a substitution of a word or phrase by a less literal word or phrase". The word trope has also undergone a semantic change and now also describes commonly recurring or overused literary and rhetorical devices, motifs or clichés in creative works. Literary tropes span almost every category of writing, such as poetry, film, plays, and video games.

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References

↑ Grand style (rhetoric) at Google Books
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↑ "Definition of Epistrophe in Oxford dictionary". Oxford Dictionaries. Oxford University Press. Archived from the original on October 12, 2012. Retrieved 6 March 2014.
↑ "Definition of epiphora in Oxford dictionary". Oxford Dictionaries. Oxford University Press. Archived from the original on July 12, 2012. Retrieved 6 March 2014.
↑ Adamson,Sylvia.Reading Shakespeare's Dramatic Language. Retrieved 3/10/12.
1 2 "Archived copy" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2014-06-23. Retrieved 2014-06-18.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link) Matthew Arnold, On Translating Homer], e-text (PDF) from victorianprose.org Retrieved 18/6/14.
↑ Robert Burns Shaw, Blank Verse: A Guide to its History and Use (Ohio University Press, 2007), page 1