The Sisters: Chiaroscuro

Here's another list of rhetorical tools: http://www.virtualsalt.com/rhetoric.htm. Although this site is not nearly as extensive as the Silva Rhetoricae, it's more user friendly.

Today I'd like to feature a rhetorical technique that neither virtualsalt.com nor the BYU humanities department included in their compilations: chiaroscuro. Chiaroscuro is the artistic balancing of light and darkness. It's one of the most common - and in my opinion, most powerful - techniques used in literature. Here's an example from "The Sisters," the first short story in Joyce's Dubliners collection:

"There was no hope for him this time: it was the third stroke. Night after night I had passed the house (it was vacation time) and studied the lighted square of window: and night after night I had found it lighted in the same way, faintly and evenly. If he was dead, I thought, I would see the reflection of candles on the darkened blind for I knew that two candles must be set at the head of a corpse. He had often said to me: "I am not long for this world," and I had thought his words idle. Now I knew they were true. Every night as I gazed up at the window I said softly to myself the word paralysis. It had always sounded strangely in my ears, like the word gnomon in the Euclid and the word simony in the Catechism. But now it sounded to me like the name of some maleficent and sinful being. It filled me with fear, and yet I longed to be nearer to it and to look upon its deadly work."

All of us inherently sense what darkness symbolizes. In this passage, darkness is closely associated with hopelessness, death, maleficence or evil, sin, and fear. Light embodies the opposite qualities; the passage above juxtaposes light with life and truth, but in any religion, light is also a common symbol of revelation, goodness, and deity.

How can chiaroscuro enhance your own writing?

Portrait of the Artist: Characterization

Characterization is important. It gives life to your characters and resonance to your narrative. In the academic world, it's formally known as "characterismus," and BYU’s Silva Rhetoricae furnishes the following definition - "The description of a person's character. If this is restricted to the body, this is effictio; if restricted to a person's habits, this is ethopoeia."

How would you describe a character in a story? You might focus on their mannerisms, interests, or behaviors (ethopoeia), or on the other hand, you might illustrate what they look like (effictio). Allow me to provide examples.

I think a wonderful example of ethopoeia comes from A Portrait of a Artist as a Young Man, Joyce's semi-autobiographical novel. In the novel, Stephen Dedalus describes his father as "A medical student, an oarsman, a tenor, an amateur actor, a shouting politician, a small landlord, a small investor, a drinker, a good fellow, a story-teller, somebody's secretary, something in a distillery, a tax-gatherer, a bankrupt and at present a praiser of his own past."

Although the father’s physical features are left unmentioned, we gain a sense of who he is because of what he has done.

As for effictio, which deals with physical appearance, consider another passage from the same novel. One of the priests, Father Dolan, is described like this: “Stephen lifted his eyes in wonder and saw for a moment Father Dolan's white-grey not young face, his baldy white-grey head with fluff at the sides of it, the steel rims of his spectacles and his no-coloured eyes looking through the glasses.”

How can you balance these two methods of characterization in your own writing?

The Dead: Zeugma

This is one of my favorite websites: http://humanities.byu.edu/rhetoric/silva.htm

Rhetoric is such a powerful and beautiful subject to study; an increased awareness of any of these techniques is guaranteed to approve your writing, no matter your experience. Plus, the more you have tucked in your literary tool belt, the more interesting, flexible, and effective your writing will be.

Rhetoric, admittedly, can be a little intimidating at first. Few rhetorical tools have English names; however, many such tools are already familiar to us. Take "zeugma," for example. Zeugma simply means that one part of speech is animating multiple other parts of speech.

Here's one of the first lines from "The Dead" by James Joyce. In the story, the two hostesses are bustling about, ensuring that the final preparations are in place for their annual party:

"Miss Kate and Miss Julia were there, gossiping and laughing and fussing, walking after each other to the head of the stairs, peering down over the banisters and calling down to Lily to ask her who had come."

Let's take a closer look. To help the reader feel the mild frenzy taking place, the compound subject, Miss Kate and Miss Julia, is animated by a number of different verbs. In one sentence, the author writes that Miss Kate and Miss Julia are gossiping, laughing, fussing, walking, peering, and calling. One subject, multiple verbs. That's zeugma! (Diazeugma, to be exact.)

How can you better incorporate zeugma into your own writing?

Portrait of the Artist: And all over the playgrounds

I was first introduced to James Joyce by a good friend. She had been absolutely enthralled by A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, so whether out of peer pressure or out of prideful competitiveness, I decided I had to read the book for myself. I, too, was enthralled.

Let me ask you this:

As a writer, how would you describe a cricket game?

Cricket and literature have had a close relationship for years. Writers like A.A. Milne, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and even Joyce's one-time secretary, Samuel Beckett, were all notorious players of the sport. Personally, however, I doubt that I could do justice to cricket. My own attempt to describe a cricket game with any amount of intelligence would be pretty laughable. I'm too much of a baseball fan. Contrarily, although Joyce was never known for physical prowess on the field, his description, in my opinion, is revolutionary. I think all writers can learn something from the passage below:

"And all over the playgrounds they were playing rounders and bowling twisters and lobs. And from here and from there came the sounds of the cricket bats through the soft grey air. They said: pick, pack, pock, puck: little drops of water in a fountain slowly falling in the brimming bowl."

What literary techniques does Joyce use to bring the game to life?

Ulysses: Pineapple rock, lemon platt, butter scotch

Here's another example of masterful writing from Ulysses:

"Pineapple rock, lemon platt, butter scotch. A sugarsticky girl shovelling scoopfuls of creams for a christian brother. Some school treat. Bad for their tummies. Lozenge and comfit manufacturer to His Majesty the King. God. Save. Our. Sitting on his throne sucking red jujubes white."

In this passage, Leopold Bloom, the novel's protagonist, is going about an ordinary day in Dublin. His thoughts, however, show that he, like all of us, is constantly living in two different worlds - an internal world and an external. Externally, Bloom sees children with ice cream, but this simple sensory information sends a wave of disjointed ripples through his mind.

Every human being has a fragmented mind. As a result, we often have difficulty concentrating on a single object or idea for more than a few seconds. We are often given to irrational breaks in our thoughts. This natural psychological tension in reality and in fiction, however, opens up a plethora of possibilities for writers. Let's take another look at the passage above. Against the unremarkable foreground of a girl scooping ice cream, Joyce appeals to at least three of the reader's senses; reveals Bloom’s demeanor, his opinions, and his satirical wit; and also provides a glimpse into the protagonist's past - all in only a few lines.

As a writer, are you in tune with what your characters are personally experiencing?