Modern signification of Rhetoric. Theory of literary form.
In compensation for this process, the theory of elocution and beautiful speech has been in modern times progressively emphasized and thrown into scientific form. But the idea of such a science is ancient, as we have seen; and equally ancient is the style of exposition, consisting in the doctrine of a double form and the concept of ornate form.
Concept of ornament.
The concept of "ornament" must have occurred spontaneously to the mind as soon as attention was directed to the values of speech by listening to poets reciting[14] or to oratorical contests in public gatherings. It must very early have been thought that the difference between good speaking and bad, or between that which gave more pleasure and that which gave less, between grave or solemn, and commonplace or colloquial, consisted in something additional superimposed upon the canvas of ordinary speech like an embroidery by a skilful orator. These considerations led the Græco-Roman rhetoricians to adopt the practice, like the Indians, who arrived at the distinction independently, to distinguish the bare (ψιλή) or purely grammatical form from another form containing an addition which they called ornament, κόσμος: ornatum est (Quintilian will serve, as typical of all the rest) quod perspicuo ac probabili plus est.[15]
The notion of ornament as something added on from outside forms the basis of the theory which Aristotle, the philosopher of Rhetoric, gave of the queen of ornaments, Metaphor. According to him the high pleasure aroused by metaphor arises from the collocation of different terms and the discovery of relations between species and genera, producing "learning and knowledge by means of the genus" (μαθησιν καi γνῶσιν διὰ τοῦ γένους), and that easy learning which is the greatest of human pleasures,[16] which amounts to saying that metaphor adds to the concept under consideration a group of minor incidental cognitions, as a kind of diversion and relief and pleasant instruction for the mind.
Classes of ornament.
Ornaments were divided and subdivided in a number of different ways. Aristotle (and previously Isocrates, rather differently) classified the ornaments which diversify bare or nude form, under the heads of dialect forms, substitutions and epithets, prolongations, truncations and abbreviations of words, and other departures from common usage, and, finally, rhythm and harmony. Substitutions were of four classes: species for genus; genus for species; species for species; and proportionate.[17] After Aristotle, elocution was especially studied by Theophrastus and Demetrius Phalereus; these rhetoricians and their followers further solidified the classification of ornament by distinguishing tropes from figures (σχήματα) and dividing figures into figures of speech (scheimata τῆς λέχεως) and of thought (τῆς διανοίας), figures of speech into grammatical and rhetorical, and figures of thought into pathetic and ethic. Substitutions were divided into fourteen principal forms, metaphor, synecdoche, metonymy, antonomasia, onomatopeia, catachresis, metalepsis, epithet, allegory, enigma, irony, periphrase, hyperbaton and hyperbole; each divided into subspecies and contrasted with its relative vice. Figures of speech amounted to a score or so (repetition, anaphora, antistrophe, climax, asyndeton, assonance, etc.); figures of thought to about the same number (interrogation, prosopopœia, ætiopœia, hypotyposis, commotion, simulation, exclamation, apostrophe, aposiopesis, etc.). If these divisions have any value as aids to memory in relation to particular literary forms, considered rationally they are simply capricious, as is evidenced by the fact that many classes of the ornate appear now under the heading of tropes, now of figures; sometimes under figures of speech, then as those of thought, no reason for the alteration is given except the arbitrary caprice of an individual rhetorician which so decrees and disposes. And since one function which may be fulfilled by the rhetorical categories is to point out the divergence between two ways of expressing the same thing, one of which is arbitrarily selected as "proper,"[18] it is easy to see why the ancients defined metaphor as "verbi vel sermonis a propria significatione in aliam cum virtute mutatio," and figure as "conformatio quaedam orationis remota a communi et primum se offerenti ratione."[19]
The concept of the Fitting.
So far as we know, antiquity raised no revolt against the theory of ornament or of double form. We do sometimes hear Cicero, Quintilian, Seneca and others saying, Ipsae res verba rapiunt, Pectus est quod disertos facit et vis mentis, Rem tene, verba sequentur, Curam verborum rerum volo esse sollicitudinem, or Nulla est verborum nisi rei cohaerentium virtus. But these maxims did not bear the weighty meanings which we moderns might attach to them; they were perhaps in contradiction with the theory of ornament, but as the contradiction was unheeded, it was ineffective: they were the protests of common sense, powerless to combat the fallacies of school doctrine. Moreover, the latter was fitted with a safety-valve, a sage contrivance to disguise its inherent absurdity. If the ornate consisted of a plus, in what degree should it be used? if it gave pleasure, must we not conclude that the more it were used, the greater the pleasure derived? would its extravagant use be attended by extravagant pleasure? Herein was peril: instinctively the rhetoricians hastened to the defence, snatching up the first weapon that came to hand, namely, the fitting (πρέπον) Ornament must be used carefully; neither too much too little; in medio virtus; as much as is fitting (ἀλλά πρέπον). Aristotle recommends a style seasoned with "a certain dose" (δεῑ ἃρα κεκρᾶσθαί πως τούτοις.) for ornament should be a condiment, not a food (ἤδυσμα, οὐκ ἒδεσμα). [20] The fitting was a concept quite inconsistent with that of ornament; it was a rival, and enemy, destined to destroy it. Fitting to what? to expression of course; but that which is fitting to expression cannot be called an ornament, an external addition; it coincides with expression itself. But the rhetoricians contented themselves with maintaining peaceful relations between the ornate and the fitting, without troubling to mediate them through a third concept. The pseudo-Longinus alone in answer to an observation of his predecessor Cæcilius that more than two or three metaphors must not be used in the same place, remarked that a larger number ought to be used where passion (τὰ πάθη) rushes headlong like a torrent, carrying with it as necessaries (ὡς ἀναγκαῑον) a multitude of such substitutions.[21]
The theory of ornament in the Middle Ages and Renaissance.