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The Elements Of Eloquence
''The Elements of Eloquence: How to Turn the Perfect English Phrase'' is a non-fiction book by Mark Forsyth published in 2013. The book explains classical rhetoric, dedicating each chapter to a rhetorical figure with examples of its use, particularly in the works of William Shakespeare. Forsyth argues the power of Shakespeare's language was a result of studying formal rhetoric, and highlights their use through Shakespeare's development. Chapters 1: Alliteration Repeating the sound of the first consonant in a series of words. An example of its deliberate overuse given by Forsyth is: 2: Polyptoton Forsyth defines this as the "use of one word as different parts of speech or in different grammatical forms". The term applies wherever words derived from the same root (e.g. wretched and wretchedness) are used. Other sources use the related term antanaclasis when the same word is repeated in a different sense. 3: Antithesis The use of opposites for contrasting effect. The example q ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mark Forsyth
Mark Forsyth (born 2 April 1977) is a British writer of non-fiction who came to prominence with a series of books concerning the meaning and etymology of English words. He is the author of best-selling books '' The Etymologicon'', '' The Horologicon'', and ''The Elements of Eloquence'', as well as being known for his blog The Inky Fool. Forsyth's earlier work was based around the meaning of words and more specifically, obscure and out-of-use words. His first two books were featured on BBC Radio 4's series Book of the Week. In June 2012, Forsyth gave a TEDX talk entitled "What’s a snollygoster? A short lesson in political speak". Education Forsyth attended Winchester College in Winchester, Hampshire, England from 1990 to 1995. He also studied English Language & Literature at Lincoln College, Oxford University from 1996 to 1999. Career The Inky Fool As a self-described journalist, proofreader, ghostwriter and pedant, Forsyth started a blog called the ''Inky Fool'' in 2009 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Richard Lovelace (poet)
Richard Lovelace (pronounced , homophone of "loveless") (9 December 1618 – 1657) was an English poet in the seventeenth century. He was a cavalier poet who fought on behalf of the king during the Civil War. His best known works are " To Althea, from Prison", and " To Lucasta, Going to the Warres". Biography Early life and family Richard Lovelace was born on 9 December 1617. His exact birthplace is unknown, and may have been Woolwich, Kent, or Holland.Weidhorn, Manfred. Richard Lovelace. New York: Twayne Publishers, Inc., 1970 He was the oldest son of Sir William Lovelace and Anne Barne Lovelace. He had four brothers and three sisters. His father was from a distinguished military and legal family; the Lovelace family owned a considerable amount of property in Kent. His father, Sir William Lovelace, was a member of the Virginia Company and an incorporator in the second Virginia Company in 1609. He was a soldier and died during the war with Spain and the Dutch Republic in the S ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Steinbeck
John Ernst Steinbeck Jr. (; February 27, 1902 – December 20, 1968) was an American writer and the 1962 Nobel Prize in Literature winner "for his realistic and imaginative writings, combining as they do sympathetic humor and keen social perception." He has been called "a giant of American letters." During his writing career, he authored 33 books, with one book coauthored alongside Edward Ricketts, including 16 novels, six non-fiction books, and two collections of short stories. He is widely known for the comic novels ''Tortilla Flat'' (1935) and ''Cannery Row'' (1945), the multi-generation epic '' East of Eden'' (1952), and the novellas ''The Red Pony'' (1933) and ''Of Mice and Men'' (1937). The Pulitzer Prize–winning ''The Grapes of Wrath'' (1939) is considered Steinbeck's masterpiece and part of the American literary canon. In the first 75 years after it was published, it sold 14 million copies. Most of Steinbeck's work is set in central California, particularly in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
We Shall Fight On The Beaches
"We shall fight on the beaches" is a common title given to a speech delivered by the British Prime Minister Winston Churchill to the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom on 4 June 1940. This was the second of three major speeches given around the period of the Battle of France; the others are the "Blood, toil, tears and sweat" speech of 13 May 1940, and the "This was their finest hour" speech of 18 June 1940. Events developed dramatically over the five-week period, and although broadly similar in themes, each speech addressed a different military and diplomatic context. In this speech, Churchill had to describe a great military disaster, and warn of a possible invasion attempt by Nazi Germany, without casting doubt on eventual victory. He also had to prepare his domestic audience for France's falling out of the war without in any way releasing France to do so, and wished to reiterate a policy and an aim unchangeddespite the intervening eventsfrom his speec ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Monty Python's Life Of Brian
''Monty Python's Life of Brian'' (also known as ''Life of Brian'') is a 1979 British comedy film starring and written by the comedy group Monty Python (Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones and Michael Palin). It was directed by Jones. The film tells the story of Brian Cohen (played by Chapman), a young Jewish-Roman man who is born on the same day as—and next door to—Jesus, and is subsequently mistaken for the Messiah. Following the withdrawal of funding by EMI Films just days before production was scheduled to begin, long-time Python fan and former Beatle George Harrison arranged financing for ''Life of Brian'' through the formation of his company HandMade Films. The film's themes of religious satire were controversial at the time of its release, drawing accusations of blasphemy and protests from some religious groups. Thirty-nine local authorities in the United Kingdom either imposed an outright ban, or imposed an X (18 years) certificate. S ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Overwhelming Exception
An overwhelming exception is an informal fallacy of generalization. It is a generalization that is accurate, but comes with one or more qualifications which eliminate so many cases that what remains is much less impressive than the initial statement might have led one to believe. Examples * "Our foreign policy has always helped other countries, except of course when it is against our National Interest..." :The false implication is that their foreign policy always helps other countries. The rhetorical use of the fallacy can be used to comic effect, as in the below examples: * "All right, but apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system, and public health... ''what have the Romans ever done for us!?''" – ''Monty Python's Life of Brian'' :The attempted implication (fallacious in this case) is that the Romans did nothing for them. *"Well, I promise the answer will always be ''yes.'' Unless ''no'' is required." – '' M ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
And Did Those Feet In Ancient Time
"And did those feet in ancient time" is a poem by William Blake from the preface to his epic '' Milton: A Poem in Two Books'', one of a collection of writings known as the Prophetic Books. The date of 1804 on the title page is probably when the plates were begun, but the poem was printed .Cox, Michael, editor, ''The Concise Oxford Chronology of English Literature'', "1808", p 289, Oxford University Press, 2004, Today it is best known as the hymn "Jerusalem", with music written by Sir Hubert Parry in 1916. The famous orchestration was written by Sir Edward Elgar. It is not to be confused with another poem, much longer and larger in scope and also by Blake, called ''Jerusalem The Emanation of the Giant Albion''. It is often assumed that the poem was inspired by the apocryphal story that a young Jesus, accompanied by Joseph of Arimathea, a tin merchant, travelled to what is now England and visited Glastonbury during his unknown years.Icons – a portrait of England. Icon: Jerusal ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
William Blake
William Blake (28 November 1757 – 12 August 1827) was an English poet, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognised during his life, Blake is now considered a seminal figure in the history of the poetry and visual art of the Romantic Age. What he called his " prophetic works" were said by 20th-century critic Northrop Frye to form "what is in proportion to its merits the least read body of poetry in the English language". His visual artistry led 21st-century critic Jonathan Jones to proclaim him "far and away the greatest artist Britain has ever produced". In 2002, Blake was placed at number 38 in the BBC's poll of the 100 Greatest Britons. While he lived in London his entire life, except for three years spent in Felpham, he produced a diverse and symbolically rich collection of works, which embraced the imagination as "the body of God" or "human existence itself". Although Blake was considered mad by contemporaries for his idiosyncratic views, he is held in high regard b ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sonnet 18
"Sonnet 18" is one of the best-known of the 154 sonnets written by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare. In the sonnet, the speaker asks whether he should compare the Fair Youth to a summer's day, but notes that he has qualities that surpass a summer's day. He also notes the qualities of a summer day are subject to change and will eventually diminish. The speaker then states that the Fair Youth will live forever in the lines of the poem, as long as it can be read. There is an irony being expressed in this sonnet: it is not the actual young man who will be eternalized, but the description of him contained in the poem, and the poem contains scant or no description of the young man, but instead contains vivid and lasting descriptions of a summer day, which the young man is supposed to outlive. Structure Sonnet 18 is a typical English or Shakespearean sonnet, having 14 lines of iambic pentameter: three quatrains followed by a couplet. It also has the characteri ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Parataxis
Parataxis (from el, παράταξις, "act of placing side by side"; from παρα, ''para'' "beside" + τάξις, ''táxis'' "arrangement") is a literary technique, in writing or speaking, that favors short, simple sentences, without conjunctions or with the use of coordinating, but not with subordinating conjunctions. It contrasts with syntaxis and hypotaxis. It is also used to describe a technique in poetry in which two images or fragments, usually starkly dissimilar images or fragments, are juxtaposed without a clear connection. Readers are then left to make their own connections implied by the paratactic syntax. Ezra Pound, in his adaptation of Chinese and Japanese poetry, made the stark juxtaposition of images an important part of English-language poetry. Etymology Edward Parmelee Morris wrote in 1901 that the term was introduced into linguistics by Friedrich Thiersch in his ''Greek Grammar'' (1831). The term has remained unchanged, but the concept of parataxis has e ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hypotaxis
Hypotaxis is the grammatical arrangement of functionally similar but "unequal" constructs (from Greek ''hypo-'' "beneath", and ''taxis'' "arrangement"); certain constructs have more importance than others inside a sentence. A common example of syntactic expression of hypotaxis is the subordination of one syntactic unit to another in a complex sentence.Stanley Fish, ''How to Write a Sentence'' p 51 Another example is observed in premodification. In the phrase "inexpensive composite materials", "composite" modifies "materials" while "inexpensive" modifies the complex head "composite materials", rather than "composite" or "materials". In this example the phrase units are hierarchically structured, rather than being on the same level, as compared to the example "Cockroaches love warm, damp, dark places." Note the syntactic difference; hypotactic modifiers cannot be separated by a comma. John Keats's "Ode to a Nightingale" has an example of hypotaxis in the second stanza: "O, for a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
If—
"If—" is a poem by English writer and poet Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936), written circa 1895 as a tribute to Leander Starr Jameson. It is a literary example of Victorian-era stoicism. The poem, first published in ''Rewards and Fairies'' (1910) following the story "Brother Square-Toes", is written in the form of paternal advice to the poet's son, John. Publication "If—" first appeared in the "Brother Square Toes" chapter of the book ''Rewards and Fairies'', a collection of Kipling's poetry and short-story fiction published in 1910. In his posthumously published autobiography, ''Something of Myself'' (1937), Kipling said that, in writing the poem, he was inspired by the character of Leander Starr Jameson, leader of the failed Jameson Raid against the South African Republic to overthrow the Boer government of Paul Kruger. The failure of that mercenary coup d'état aggravated the political tensions between Great Britain and the Boers, which led to the Second Boer War (1899–19 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
