Editor's note: It is with delight and all kinds of pedagogical excitement that we introduce contributor Squintilian. For those rusty on their rhetoric, Marcus Fabius Quintilianus (c.35-c.100) - Quintilian - authored the seminal Institutio Oratoria when he was not, as our own cheerful local teacher and rhetorician, grading student papers.
How many writing teachers have set
their students loose on the world to find examples of creatively used
language? But why ask student readers to
hunt for powerful sentences or apt word choice in the works of professional
writers, when their own texts lie before them, untapped resources in the quest
for variety and unusual language effects?
I
propose a modest project of mining student work for those tropes and schemes that
composition teachers so love. We start this morning with the powerful figure
"antistrophe" with two examples from a local 10th grade honors
English class. The literate reader will
no doubt guess which bedrock text of 20th century American literature informed
these students' writing muse.
Our
first writer succinctly combines antistrophe with the ever-popular figure of
personification: "They were asked the same question which asked if they
were a witch."
And
perhaps more elegant because of its simplicity and symmetry: "In addition
to many people being hung, many people were also hung."
Enough
for now. In the words of another of my students, "The people blamed
everyone and soon came to an end."
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