Composition II Commonplace Book Assignments

General Commonplace Book Guidelines

This year we will begin each class by learning about and looking at examples of different figures of speech. Figures of speech are any deviation, either in thought or expression, from the ordinary and simple method of speaking. Figures are ways to use words effectively.

There are two kinds of figures:

Schemes: a deviation from the ordinary pattern or arrangement of words {a transference of order}

Tropes: a deviation from the ordinary and principal signification of words {a transference of meaning}

This year we will be recording our figures in a commonplace book. A commonplace book is simply a journal where quotes can be kept. Instructions for setting up your commonplace book can be found in the document here.

Weekly Commonplace book assignments

Each week, we will define and copy examples of one or more figures of speech into our commonplace books. Your assignment each week is to find more examples of each figure to copy, along with their sources, after the copy work from class. Below will be listed the weekly figures and examples for each class. Please add the definitions and quotes for each week's class to your commonplace book BEFORE you come to each class. Then in class we will discuss them further.

You are responsible, during the course of each semester, to add at least one more quote to each figure page. You may add more than one if you would like. I will collect your commonplace books and grade them at the end of the semester.

Happy hunting!

_________________________________________________________________

For the week of 5-6-10

Paradox:

an apparently contradictory statement that nevertheless contains a measure of truth.

…We are treated as impostors, and yet are true; as unknown, and yet well known; as dying, and behold, we live; as punished, and yet not killed; as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, yet possessing everything.

~2 Corinthians 6:8-10

Art is a form of lying in order to tell the truth.

~Pablo Picasso

_____________________________________________________________

For the week of 4-29-10

Oxymoron:

the yoking of two terms that are ordinarily contradictory.

The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light, but if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!

~Matthew 6:22-23

Here’s much to do with hate, but more with love.

Why then, O brawling love! O loving hate!

O anything of nothing first create!

O heavy lightness, serious vanity!

Misshappen chaos of well-seeming forms!

Feather of lead, bright smoke, cold fire, sick health!

Still-waking sleep, that is not what it is!

This love I feel, that feel no love in this…

~Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

____________________________________________________________

For the week of 4-22-10

Onomatopoeia:

use of words whose sound echoes the sense.

Over the cobbles he clattered and clashed in the dark innyard.

~A. Noyes, “The Highwayman”

‘Tis not enough no harshness gives offense,

The sound must seem an echo to the sense:

Soft is the strain when Zephyr gently blows,

And the smooth stream in smoother numbers flows;

But when loud surges lash the sounding shore,

The hoarse, rough verse should like a torrent roar:

When Ajax strives some rock’s vast weight to throw,

The line too labors, and the words move slow;

Not so, when swift Camilla scours the plain,

Flies o’er the unbending corn, and skims along the main.

~A. Pope, Essay on Criticism

______________________________________________________________

For the week of 4-15-10

Irony:

use of a word in such a way as to convey a meaning opposite to the literal meaning of the word.

For Brutus is an honorable man; So are they all, honorable men.

~Shakespeare, Julius Caesar

By Spring, if God was good, all the proud privileges of trench lice, mustard gas, spattered brains, punctured lungs, ripped guts, asphyxiation, mud, and gangrene, might be his.

~T. Wolfe, Look Homeward, Angel

______________________________________________________________

For the week of 4-8-10

Erotema:

asking a question, not for the purpose of eliciting an answer but for the purpose of asserting or denying something obliquely. Also known as the rhetorical question.

Then the LORD answered Job out of the whirlwind and said: "Dress for action like a man; I will question you, and you make it known to me. Will you even put me in the wrong? Will you condemn me that you may be in the right? Have you an arm like God,

and can you thunder with a voice like his?

~Job 40:6-9

Throughout Alabama all sorts of devious methods are used to prevent Negroes from becoming registered voters, and there are some counties in which, even though Negroes constitute a majority of the population, not a single Negro is registered. Can any law enacted under such circumstances be considered democratically structured?

~M. L. King, Jr., Letter from a Birmingham Jail

_______________________________________________________________

For the week of 3-25-10

Litotes:

deliberate use of understatement, not to deceive someone but to enhance the impressiveness of what we say.

Paul replied, "I am a Jew, from Tarsus in Cilicia, a citizen of no obscure city. I beg you, permit me to speak to the people."

~Acts 21:39

It isn’t very serious. I have this tiny little tumor on the brain.

J. D. Salinger, Catcher in the Rye

________________________________________________________________

For the week of 3-11-10

Hyperbole:

the use of exaggerated terms for the purpose of emphasis or heightened effect.

He said to his brothers, "My money has been put back; here it is in the mouth of my sack!" At this their hearts failed them, and they turned trembling to one another, saying, "What is this that God has done to us?"

~Genesis 42:28

He roared so loud, and looked so grim,

His very shadow durst not follow him.

~A. Pope, Peri Bathous

_______________________________________________________________

For the week of 3-4-10

Prosopopoeia:

investing abstractions or inanimate objects with human qualities or abilities. Also known as personification.

Sing for joy, O heavens, and exult, O earth;

break forth, O mountains, into singing!

for the LORD has comforted his people

and will have compassion on his afflicted.

~Isaiah 49:13

Below, the coastline bares its teeth.

~A. Reid, Weatherings

“O eloquent, just, and mighty Death! Whom none could advise, thou hast persuaded; what none hath dared, thou hast done; and whom all the world has flattered, thou only hast cast out the world and despised. Thou hast drawn together all the far-stretched greatness, all the pride, cruelty, and ambition of man, and covered it all with these two narrow words, Hic jacet{Here lies}.

~W. Raleigh, History of the World

______________________________________________________________

For the week of 2-25-10

Periphrasis:

substitution of a descriptive word or phrase for a proper name or of a proper name for a quality associated with the name.

For we know that if the tent, which is our earthly home, is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.

~2 Corinthians 5:1

Now he is traveling the dark road to the place from which they say no one has ever returned.

~Catullus

_______________________________________________________________

For the week of 2-18-10

Anthimeria:

the substitution of one part of speech for another.

Thank me no thankings, nor proud me no prouds.

~Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

anyone lived in a pretty how town

(with up so floating many bells down)

spring summer autumn winter

he sang his didn’t he danced his did.

Women and men(both little and small)

cared for anyone not at all

they sowed their isn’t they reaped their same

sun moon stars rain…

~E. E. Cummings, anyone lived in a pretty how town

_______________________________________________________________

For the week of 2-11-10

Please note: this week you will add four (4) pages to your commonplace books: one for puns in general, and then one each for three specific kinds of puns.

Puns:

a generic name for those figures which make a play on words. See also: antanaclasis, paronomasia and syllepsis.

Antanaclasis:

a type of pun that uses repetition of a word in two different senses.

If we don’t hang together, we’ll hang separately.

~Benjamin Franklin

In thy youth learn some craft, that in thy age thou mayest get thy living without craft. Care for those things that shall discharge you of all care.”

~W. Espry, The Garden of Eloquence

Paronomasia:

a type of pun that uses words which are alike in sound but different in meaning.

And I tell you, you are Peter {Petros}, and on this rock {petra} I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.

~Matthew 16:18

When Jane spelled “weather” w-e-t-h-i-r, her teacher said, “That’s the worst spell of weather we’ve had around here in years.”

W. Espry, The Garden of Eloquence

Syllepsis:

a type of pun that uses a word that is understood differently in relation to two or more words, which it modifies or governs.

“I am sorry to interrupt,” he said in Italian and high dudgeon.

~R. Ludlum, The Bourne Identity

Here thou, great Anna! Whom three realms obey

Dost sometimes counsel take—and sometimes tea.

~A. Pope, “The Rape of the Lock”

_________________________________________________________________

For the week of 1-28-10

Metonymy:

substitution of some attributive or suggestive word for what is actually meant.

Do not quench the Spirit.

~1 Thessalonians 5:19

I should have been a pair of ragged claws

Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.

~T. S. Eliot, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”

“Is the second floor at home?”

“Somebody went out just now, but I think it was the attic which had been a-cleaning of himself.”

~C. Dickens, Nicholas Nickleby

________________________________________________________________

For the week of 1-21-10

Synecdoche:

a figure of speech in which a part stands for the whole.

Give us this day our daily bread…

~Matthew 6:11

\

“The door closed upon the extempore surgeon and midwife, and Roaring Camp sat down outside, smoked its pipe, and awaited the issue.”

~B. Harte, “The Luck of Roaring Camp”

_________________________________________________________________

For the week of 1-14-10

Simile:

an explicit comparison between two things of unlike nature that yet have something in common.

Similes*

As wet as a fish—as dry as a bone;

As live as a bird—as dead as a stone;

As plump as a partridge—as poor as a rat;

As strong as a horse—as weak as a cat;

As hard as flint—as soft as a mole;

As white as a lily—as black as coal;

As plain as a pike-staff—as rough as a bear;

As light as a drum—as free as the air;

As heavy as lead—as light as a feather;

As steady as time—uncertain as weather;

As hot as an oven—as cold as fog;

As gay as a lark—as sick as a dog;

As slow as the tortoise—as swift as the wind;

As true as the Gospel—as false as mankind;

As thin as a herring—as fat as a pig;

As proud as a peacock—as blithe as a grig;

As savage as tigers—as mild as a dove;

As stiff as a poker—as limp as a glove;

As blind as a bat—as deaf as a post;

As cool as a cucumber—as warm as toast;

As flat as a flounder—as round as a ball;

As blunt as a hammer—as sharp as an awl;

As red as a ferret—as safe as the stocks;

As bold as a thief—as sly as a fox;

As straight as an arrow—as crook’d as a bow;

As yellow as saffron—as black as a sloe;

As brittle as glass—as tough as gristle;

As neat as my nail—as clean as a whistle;

As good as a feast—as bad as a witch;

As light as is day—as dark as is pitch;

As brisk as a bee—as dull as an ass;

As full as a tick—as solid as brass.

*And they’re clichés, too!

~Anonymous

_________________________________________________________________

For the week of 1-7-10

Trope:

a variation in the ordinary and principle signification of a word {a transference of meaning}.

Metaphor:

an implied comparison between two things of unlike mature that yet have something in common.

It being a windy day, half a dozen men were tacking across the road.

-C. Dickens, Nicholas Nickleby

Now he was a broken-down old man—whose mind had been, as it were, unbooted and put into moral slippers for the remainder of its term of existence upon earth.

-A. Trollope, The Prime Minister

_________________________