Farnsworth's Classical English Rhetoric (Farnsworth's Classical English series, 1) - Hardcover

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Rhetoric, one of the oldest academic disciplines, has two

faces: first, the art of using language to influence or persuade;

second, the body of established patterns of language,

spoken or written, that makes words and phrases memorable,

emphatic, and effective. There are very few recent books that

tackle the subject, and in this new effort, written with the

scholar and orator in mind, Farnsworth collects and discusses

the great masters of English prose Lincoln and Churchill,

Dickens and Melville, Burke and Paine and, using their own

words, proceeds to organize, illustrate, and analyze the most

frequently used rhetorical devices with clarity and detail.

The way we use our language to convince and cajole is based

on timeless principles on repetition and variety, suspense and

relief, expectation and satisfaction that have been employed

by writers and speakers since the Golden Age of Greece. They

can be applied with effect to the construction of simple sentences

and paragraphs, or entire compositions. Here, distilled

from the best examples in our language, we see those principles

in actual use: for the general reader it is an indispensable guide,

a highly useful reference, and a rewarding (and even entertaining)

source of instruction.