Zeugma

The 11^th session of „Text Production“ on January 18^th was opened by the presentation of a special rhetorical device. Zeugma, from Greek “bonding”, is a figure of speech in which a word or a phrase applies to more than one noun or verb. In other words, zeugma is when you use for example a verb (or an adjective or a subject) in multiple ways at the same time while only using it only once. It is also possible that this word can be literal in one part of the sentence, and sometimes figurative in another. This rhetorical device, which joins together two different parts of a sentence, is an interesting device that can cause confusion in sentences or can create a dramatic effect. Let´s take a look at an example:

              

  The farmers in the valley grew potatoes, peanuts and tomatoes.

  à You can see that the verb grew applies to multiple parts of the sentence. In other words the farmers grew potatoes, they grew peanuts and they grew tomatoes.

  The farmers in the valley grew potatoes, peanuts, and bored.

 à In this example you can see that the verb grew is being used in two different senses: 1)  literally; the farmers grew potatoes and peanuts and  2) figuratively; the farmers also grew bored.

Depending on the position of the verb/adjective there are 3 different types of zeugma.

- Prozeugma: Her beauty pierced mine eye, her speech mine woeful heart, her presence all the powers of my discourse.

 à  The verb/adjective, which holds together the entire sentence, is expressed in the beginning of the sentence and is skipped after.

- Mesozeugma: Neither his father nor his mother could persuade him; neither his friends nor his kinsmen.

à The verb/adjective is expressed in the middle clause.

- Hypozeugma: The foundation of freedom, the fountain of equity, the safeguard of wealth, and custody of life is preserved by laws.

à The verb/adjective is expressed in the last clause.

Special types:

- The seven of us discussed, argued, tried, failed, tried again.
   à  Diazeugma: a single subject is accompanied by multiple verbs

- I came, I saw, I conquered.

   à Hypozeuxis: the use of a series of parallel clauses

Telescoping

Last week I bought my new favorite pair of jeans. They are dyed in a deep ocean blue indigo color, cut slim and have rusty-gold buttons. The color is so rich that when I am rubbing my dry hands against the fabric it gives them a blue tint. There are also small irregularities in the overall coloration visible. When taking a closer look at how the fabric was woven, one can see that not only blue but also white threads were used in the process. The parallel lines, in which the threads were intertwined, make my new favorite pair of jeans last me for a life time. This amazes me since the cotton has a beautifully soft touch. Microscopically small fibers that are sticking

out from each thread´s surface explain this sensation. It
seems like their curly texture helps creating a peachy

touch to every part of my
new favorite

pair of

jeans.

Freighting

Reading the chapter about “Freighting” in the book “Adios, Strunk and White. A Handbook for the new Academic Essay” by Gary and Glynis Hoffman, I was amused by the enjoyable explanation of the term “Freighting” and the usage in writing texts. From the beginning as a learning child that discovers the vast extent of meaning carrying phrases and the practice of implementing “Freighting” into academic sentences. I chose to try it out on the subject of “the end of semester”:

As the semester slowly comes to an end, each student being stressed by the vast amount of essays, that are written accompanied by all-nighter, coffee buzz, distress, disregards, relief, skepticism and finally pure hatred for the finished piece of work, and as well the exam stress, that feels for most students is the final stage of suffocation in between the effort to succeed and the grading pressure that comes along with the realisation of insecurity of the fact that the studied material for the seminar, lecture, course, or any other university related subject is even convenient, relevant, and related to the upcoming oral or written exam, presentation or term paper that must be passed; notably the aftermath of the sequence of studying a great amount of facts that most likely will be forgotten within a few weeks, is that to write term paper after term paper at home, in the library, outside, indoors, focussing on one subject for more than just a few days making your brain feel like it over read the piece of work for over a million time making you think that it doesn’t even have a statement because you feel lost between all the words, phrases, sentences, and paragraphs that are supposed to underline your thesis and finally the effort to come to an end with your term paper and thereby end the semester. 

A freight train full of cats; an exaggerated retelling

1.     What I, a sleep deprived human being and longtime cat enthusiast, look forward to every day, night and all the times in between, are my bed, which is large, soft, warm, even though it never warms up fast enough for my liking and is therefore conveniently placed right next to the heater, and my cats, uncanny little beast that stomps on my head, scratch my hand, catch my toes, and end up sleeping on my blanket but more probably on my face; I never want to leave when I wake up the next morning.

2.     Apropos, cats, or animals in general, but actually just my one cat, the most kind natured, dizziest, and weirdest cat I ever had or met, and whom I love dearly, has, fittingly, an appetite for unusual foods, which I don’t claim to understand or expect cats to want to eat; this refers to confusing food choices like pepper, cucumber, and peas, which the cat smells from the other side of the house, sprints to at unnaturally high speeds, and steals out of my bowl, hand, or mouth with no shame or reluctance, every time, every single time.

3.     While I write these lengthy sentences, sitting in a big, comfortable armchair, that is placed in the dark hallway, my cat is watching, creeping, pussyfooting around this isle of sniveling productivity, waiting for me to look at their adorable, fluffy, little bodies, notice their big green eyes and twitching ears, and forget all about my work and their sharp claws for a moment, only to have them attack with their finishing move, a meow so desperate you have to feed them right away, can’t have any distractions!

4.     At times I, who is by now an established weird person with even weirder cats, like to watch movies, movies that tend to not be about cats, at all, rather they are about everything that is not a cat, but because my cats, lovely little demons that they are, tend to want attention only when I am focusing on something that is not them while in turn, they do not want attention when I give it to them, watching movies, which I like, turns into watching the cats face, butt, paws, tail, nose, ears, fur, belly, and eventually claws instead.

5.     I recently learned, while observing and studying cats, my dominating occupation, that house cats, furry, carnivorous mammals of the felidae family, are fascinated, intrigued, captivated by fire, usually candle light, a combustion reaction that is releasing heat and light while being precariously balanced on the edge of a shelf, just out of reach for pawed individuals, which does not discourage them from engaging, at which point I imagine, just for a moment, what would happen if I do not intervene and in that instant I can see my house burning to the ground.

Freighting

“Write ten flow sentences, using the freighting technique, each one about a different aspect of your life…They should each be six typed lines long and numbered; do not worry about putting them in an essay. As with the sample sentences, some freight cars should be stacked high with weighty material, other cars may be left with one item, and if you need to, use a connecting word (a conjunction) only one time per sentence to attach a related sentence train to your first train in order to sustain a longer flow.”

“one about foods you enjoy…”
I like to eat strawberry shortcake.

As I leisurely lay on my bed, while watching The Vikings on TV, one of my favorite TV shows, I like to eat strawberry shortcake, filled to the brim with freshly harvested, red, juicy strawberries, and thick, creamy, artery clogging, whipped cream, not sharing a single slice with any of my egoistical, greedy, and ungrateful family members, which include my parents, sister, and all my aunts and uncles, who have been eyeing every cake I ever bought with my own money, or baked with my own strength, all along.

“One about films or books that mean much to you…”
One of my favorite movies is Deadpool.

I tend to like TV shows more than movies, as I like to binge on lengthy, heart wrenching, pieces that often consume not only my whole life, but also my whole paycheck, however, one of my favorite movies, which do not include many movies at all, is Deadpool, because I feel that the main character, Wade Wilson, who looks like a rotten avocado, one that has been in a horrible car accident, left to rot on a hot hot summer day, is witty, rather relatable, well endowed and full of humor, which can often be perceived as black humor, as he is scarred, deeply depressed, and a victim of torture, yet he remains hopeful in the search of his long lost friend, the friend he has sacrificed so much for, Francis, or as he refers to himself, Ajax, the dishwashing soap. [Disclaimer: some of this is and indirect quote from the movie, I know nothing about Ryan Reynolds' nether region]

I read many Manga

I read many manga, which are similar to comics, but cooler, with more variety, drawn more beautifully, with much more attention to detail, many different genres that you can pick from, such as Shojo, Shonen, Josei, Seinen and Sports Manga, most of which are R-rated, due to their violent, explicit, brutal, sometimes overly sexual depiction of events, as opposed to Anime, which is forced to tone everything down, thus, leaving us with plot holes, confusion and dissatisfaction, in order to protect young viewers from potential trauma.

Drawing is my hobby

Creating masterpieces, learning from mistakes, drawing, the form of art that I chose, of the many forms of art that exist, the release I need, is not only my hobby, but my passion, the reason I am alive, striving, looking forward to tomorrow, every line I draw filled with my unrelenting emotions, sometimes depicting anger, sadness, loneliness or contempt, my eyes seeing the beauty in unexpected places, places many avoid, trash talk, or utterly disregard, learning a valuable lesson, that imperfections can harvest beauty, too,  that light wouldn’t exist without shadow.

My best friend is sad

My best friend, one of the few that I have, the one that left me questioning my sexuality, Lagertha, born and raised in Norway, whom I have known for so long, a beautiful angel sent from above, who has a bangin’ body, beautiful eyes, and a big heart, is often very depressed, dejected, and at a loss, even though she gives the best advice to people who feel the same, totally disregarding her own advice, she loses herself in an endless spiral of depression, and I, being the unhelpful friend that I am, can only offer her a shoulder to cry on. [Disclaimer #2: none of this is true and Lagertha from Norway is a character in “The Vikings”]

Zeugma

A zeugma is a figure of speech in which one phrase or word in a sentence ties different parts of it together. There are different types of zeugma such as:

1. Hypozeugma

This kind of zeugma connects phrases of a similar structure to a related word or phrase at the end of a sentence. Example by yours truly;

“A comedic show that makes your eyes water, abdominal muscles cramp, laughter turn silent, and your sorrow fade, such as  “Parks and recreations“, would surely be the best kind of TV-show.“

2. Prozeugma

A prozeugma is the opposite of a diazeugma. A word or a phrase at the beginning of a sentence relates to phrases at the end of it;

“Histories make men wise; poets witty; the mathematics, subtle; natural philosophy, deep; moral, grave; logic and rhetoric, able to contend“ (Francis Bacon, 1601, “Of Studies“).

3. Diazeugma

A diazeugma has one subject that relates to more than one verb in a sentence;

“Writing an essay, our hands are cramping, time is flying, and students are dying“

In the book Adios, Strunk and White Gary and Glynis Hoffman describe a writing technique called "freightening" that writers can incorporate in their texts in order to accomplish a more flowing structure.  This approach refers to a simple sentence "as flatbed freight cars"whereas more information can be added on top of them. Example sentences for this technique are for instance:

1.  I watched the movie "Colonia Dignidad".

I watched, legs outstretched and feet buried beneath several pillows, the movie "Colonia Dignidad", an eye-opening socio-political drama that emphasizes the danger of religious sects.

2.  I looked at my bookshelf and found my favorite book.

I, my hands shaking with excitement, my eyes filled with glowing joy, gradually moved my head up to look at my bookshelf filled with endless stories of exceptional authors, just to find my favorite one, the one that I have read and still read over and over again: Snow, by Orhan Pamuk.

What is “Zeugma”?

Zeugma is a rhetoric device that yokes one part of speech - often the main verb - to other parts of a sentence, which usually appear in form of a series.

There are different zeugma types depending on the position of the governing verb.

• Prozeugma (beginning position)
• Hypozeugma (ending position)
• Epizeugma (beginning or ending position)
• Mesozeugma (middle position)

There are further zeugma types depending on a governing noun.

• Diazeugma (a single subject governs several verbs or verbal constructions)
• Hypozeuxis (every clause in a series of parallel clauses has its own different verb)

Examples of hypozeugma:

All people, every woman, every man, and every child should have the opportunity to live in peace.

Absolutely exhausted from the in-class essay and devastated from the news she fell asleep at 5 p.m.

The screaming library representative, the sleeping pilot, and the hydrophopic bath keeper were all fired.

--> Use of a series of subjects with single predicate.

The different forms of zeugma are useful tools, partly for economic reasons as you don't need to repeat certain words over and over again. In addition, they serve as a device for connecting thoughts and putting emphasis on a statement.

Works Cited:

Burton, Gideon. Silva Rhetoricae. Zeugma. Brigham Young University. Web. 22. Jan. 2017. <http://rhetoric.byu.edu/Figures/Z/zeugma.htm>

Green, Roland et al. The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics. 4^th ed. Princeton & Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2012.

Telescoping is a technique that stresses close observation by the writer. The sentence works like a telescope. The Telescoping sentence keeps moving closer and closer upon ideas in the previous clause.

"The girl sits on the bench."

Telescoping "The girl" : "The girl, wearing a red dress, sits on the bench."

Telescoping "the bench" : "The girl sits on the bench, which is placed in the Central Park of New York."

Telescoping "sits" : The girl sits, crossed legs, on the bench"

The Sublime and the Beautiful

The Sublime and the Beautiful, terms coined by the British philosopher and politician Edmund Burke, are two opposing aesthetic categories which both emphasize the emotional affect that nature and art can have on human beings. Whereas the Beautiful is associated with feelings of bliss and tranquility, the Sublime simultaneously evokes awe and fear. These differing effects result from the fact that the Beautiful can be easily perceived, whilst the Sublime is too impressive for humans to capture. Hence, the Sublime illustrates the irrelevance of human beings in comparison to the force of nature, whereas men and nature can peacefully coexist in beautiful art. Therefore, sublime imagery is used in order to celebrate the power, darkness and grandness of nature, while beautiful imagery gives the impression of perfection, symmetry and lightness. Although these two principles were developed during Romanticism, they continue to be relevant in art and art criticism. While originally, sublime and beautiful elements were not supposed to be combined in one piece of art, they soon began to be juxtaposed and joined in order to show how they interact.

Modernist Literature

Modernism and Modernist Literature

“Make it new” (Lewis, The Cambridge Introduction to Modernism 26). This short statement by the poet Ezra Pound could explain the major characteristics of both modernism and modernist literature. In modernism, a rejection of traditional conventions for representing the world and the construction of works of art is the founding character trait (3). This break with tradition includes a strong reaction towards established religious, political and social views and a general point of view that truth is relative. Rather than rejecting conventions as a whole, modernism seeks to introduce new and more authentic manners of representation. In modernist literature, Pounds’ slogan can be applied in that the writers and poets began to experiment with language in response to the complexity of reality they consciously experienced. Examples include the introduction of the free verse, a violation of the syntax as well as the stream of consciousness in order to trace non-linear thought processes (1). However, a distinction is to be made between modernism and modernist literature. While in modern art works artists distanced themselves from mimesis -the depiction of reality- in modernist literature this aspect (apart from Dadaist experiments) mainly continued. A difference is that modernist literature found new methods to do so (such as the linguistic ones mentioned).

By looking at modernist literature as a historical concept, it is important to remark that modernists became consciously aware that their thoughts and behaviour were largely determined by historically rooted factors- exactly the systems that formed a constraint and they seeked to escape from. However, seeing modernist literature as a historic concept also means that artists included significant historic events within their works in order to raise awareness or to protest against it- such as the hegemony that resulted out of the so called “liberalist” order in the 19^th century where mostly the bourgeoisie held the possibility to be in power and which the modernists thus protested against through their works (12)

There are also a variety of issues when regarding modernist literature as a national concept- of which the very concept of a nation itself is one. A nation does not consist of a homogeneous society but rather different kinds of people, different political point of views and different social backgrounds to name a few examples. The United States is an example for why conceptualising modernist literature on a national level can be problematic. Due to the country’s pluralistic society, there was disagreement among the writers and artists on what the “true” American identity as well as American culture could be that artists or writers could depict in their works. Rather than functioning as an enrichment for arts, the boundaries set by rules through a national identity can narrow down the writer’s possibilities as he or she would be constantly thinking whether her or his work could be considered “British enough” or “American enough” (Morrisson, Nationalism and the modern American canon, 13).

Not only is it problematic to regard modernist literature as a national concept, but there are some major issues associated with defining modernism and its literature in the first place. First of all, it is not possible to give a precise definition of both vague terms as they are both subject to contest and the subjective opinion of the artist on what can be considered modern. As mentioned, they are often the result or the answer to political and social developments within their periods which is why there cannot be a set definition of how modernism or modernist literature should look like- because they are dynamic processes.

There is also a question that arises when dealing with modernist writers or artists whose intention was to create art against the market driven consumer society we find ourselves in nowadays- are they still allowed to be entitled modernists when they have gained international recognition and acquired wealth?