[Milton-L] Thanks for Help with terminology sought

[carl bellinger]

Erroneous there to wander and forlorne.          [ PL 7.20 ]



Thanks Prof. Skulsky. Would this also be hyperbaton, epiphrasis, & zeugma?



-Carl









----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Harold Skulsky" <hskulsky at email.smith.edu>
To: "John Milton Discussion List" <milton-l at lists.richmond.edu>
Sent: Thursday, August 23, 2007 3:40 PM
Subject: Re: [Milton-L] Thanks for Help with terminology sought


>
> In the hyperbaton exemplified by  “Your foul silence corrupts, and
> your impure breath" the verb “corrupts” is transposed so as to
> separate the two coordinated subjects. The effect is to make “and your
> impure breath” register on the hearer as an afterthought, or
> epiphrase; the speaker pretends to be freely improvising (of course he
> is doing nothing of the sort). In short the psychologically informative
> description of Professor Duran's specimen is “hyperbaton effected by
> epiphrasis.”
>
> But there’s a crucial complication. What we have here is more than a
> syntactic manoeuver (figura verborum). Seen at closer quarters, it’s a
> semantic figure (figura sententiarum)—in fact, a play of wit:
> “corrupts” goes in one (literal) sense with “impure breath”
> and in quite a different (figurative) sense with “foul silence.” The
> tactical effect of the afterthought is an unexpected coup de
> grâce—this person (come to think of it) is as contaminating
> physically as he (she?) is morally. (For the semantic shift, compare
> Pope’s satirical comment on the Queen who “sometimes counsel
> takes—and sometimes tea.”)
>
> The appropriate classical description for the semantic manoeuver is
> (see Alexander Rhetor 2.17) is zeugma; since the displaced term comes in
> the middle, the syntactic part of the performance would justify using
> the Diomedes’ and Asconius’ term mesozeugma (meso- = “in the
> middle”). Unfortunately, Diomedes and Asconius are nearly forgotten
> (though not by me, for better or worse), and the usual (early modern)
> source for this term is the slipshod Puttenham, who demotes mesozeugma
> to a mere synonym of “hyperbaton.”
>
> What to do? I heartily concur with Professor Green’s cautionary
> remark that classical terminology “is most useful when it points us
> toward patterns that are most worth discussing, and often the most
> interesting uses of language simultaneously involve several tropes or
> figures.” In the spirit of that remark, I vote for consigning
> “mesozeugma” to the oblivion to which Puttenham has condemned it,
> and describing Professor Duran’s specimen as a combination of
> hyperbaton, epiphrasis, and zeugma.
>
>
>
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