Farnsworth's Classical English Rhetoric. Ward Farnsworth

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СКАЧАТЬ and when it is just for the sake of being more pejorative it can produce a bit of amusement.

      Mr. Urquiza had the misfortune (equally common in the old world and the new) of being a knave; and also a showy specious knave.

      de Quincey, The Spanish Nun (1847)

      Omar Khayyam’s wine-bibbing is bad, not because it is wine-bibbing. It is bad, and very bad, because it is medical wine-bibbing.

      Chesterton, Heretics (1905)

      Butchers we are, that is true. But butchers, also, and butchers of the bloodiest badge have been all Martial Commanders whom the world invariably delights to honor.

      Melville, Moby-Dick (1851)

      b. To expand a statement or further define it.

      This pulpit style, revived after so long a discontinuance, had to me the air of novelty, and of a novelty not wholly without danger.

      Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France (1791)

      You can blast my other passions, but revenge remains – revenge, henceforth dearer than light or food!

      Shelley, Frankenstein (1818)

      Conduplicatio of this kind may be extended beyond just the one repetition; the word can be repeated again to permit enlargement upon it in different directions.

      Sir, I pronounce the author of such sentiments to be guilty of attempting a detestable fraud on the community; a double fraud; a fraud which is to cheat men out of their property, and out of the earnings of their labor, by first cheating them out of their understandings.

      Webster, speech in the Senate (1834)

      I think, and shall try to show, that it is wrong – wrong in its direct effect, letting slavery into Kansas and Nebraska, and wrong in its prospective principle, allowing it to spread to every other part of the wide world where men can be found inclined to take it.

      Lincoln, debate with Stephen Douglas at Peoria (1854)

      c. To add explanation.

      And the odious letters in the writing became very long; – odious because he had to confess in them over and over again that his daughter, the very apple of his eye, had been the wife of a scoundrel.

      Trollope, The Prime Minister (1876)

      The public interests, because about them they have no real solicitude, they abandon wholly to chance; I say to chance, because their schemes have nothing in experience to prove their tendency beneficial.

      Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France (1791)

      d. The double use of conduplicatio. A classic pattern in the use of this scheme involves two initial claims, each of which is then repeated with elaboration or reasons for it.

      Sir, he was a scoundrel, and a coward: a scoundrel, for charging a blunderbuss against religion and morality; a coward, because he had not resolution to fire it off himself, but left half a crown to a beggarly Scotchman, to draw the trigger after his death!

      Johnson, in Boswell’s Life (1791)

      We are dregs and scum, sir: the dregs very filthy, the scum very superior.

      Shaw, Man and Superman (1903)

      I need not excuse myself to your lordship, nor, I think, to any honest man, for the zeal I have shown in this cause; for it is an honest zeal, and in a good cause.

      Burke, A Vindication of Natural Society (1756)

      e. Churchillian uses of conduplicatio. Churchill made frequent and good use of conduplicatio.

      If the Government and people of the USA have a word to speak for the salvation of the world, now is the time and now is the last time when words will be of any use.

      Churchill, speech at London (1938)

      The repetition of time emphasizes it, and the fresh language afterwards is emphasized as well because it is the excuse for saying the word a second time.

      Now all the difficulty about the tribunal has been removed, and removed by the simple process of complete surrender on our part of the whole case.

      Churchill, speech in the House of Commons (1938)

      The device adds rhetorical power because each initial clause sounds complete in itself; then comes a bit of repetition and elaboration, slightly against expectations – and then perhaps still another round of the same, as here:

      [I]n the east, take Constantinople; take it by ships if you can; take it by soldiers if you must; take it by whichever plan, military or naval, commends itself to your military experts, but take it, and take it soon, and take it while time remains.

      Churchill, speech in the House of Commons (1915)

      Since take it is a phrase rather than a single word, this also can be considered a case of epimone – to which we now turn.

      4. Epimone. We now examine the repetition of entire phrases.

      a. Doublets.

      I tell you, sir, I’m serious! and now that my passions are roused, I say this house is mine, sir; this house is mine, and I command you to leave it directly.

      Goldsmith, She Stoops to Conquer (1773)

      [T]o send forth the infidel savage – against whom? against your Protestant brethren; to lay waste their country, to desolate their dwellings, and extirpate their race and name with these horrible hell-hounds of savage war – hell-hounds, I say, of savage war!

      Pitt, speech in the House of Lords (1777)

      The cause, then, Sir, the cause! Let the world know the cause which has thus induced one State of the Union to bid defiance to the power of the whole, and openly to talk of secession.

      Webster, speech in the Senate (1833)

      b. Triplets. The longer the phrase, the less consecutive repetition it will stand; so the triplets in a case of epimone tend to be shorter.

      Most lamentable day, most woful day,

       That ever, ever, I did yet behold!

       O day! O day! O day! O hateful day!

      Romeo and Juliet, 4, 5

      “He was a beggar, perhaps.” Mr. Dick shook his head, as utterly renouncing the suggestion; and having replied a great many times, and with great confidence, “No beggar, no beggar, no beggar, sir!’”

      Dickens, David Copperfield (1850)

      You seem to come like my own anger, my own malice, my own – whatever it is – I don’t know what it is. But I am ill-used, I am ill-used, I am ill-used!

      Dickens, Little Dorrit (1857)

      c. The refrain. СКАЧАТЬ