You seem to be talking about the inexpressibility topos, which is (I
think) more medieval than classical, at least in practice.
Jon Lamb
[log in to unmask] wrote:
> I'm not sure if there's a better term for it, but I've usually referred to
> this as the topos of "ineffability."
> I'm sure there's a better term for it, though.
> Andy Fleck
>
> Original Message:
> -----------------
> From: Scott Lucas [log in to unmask]
> Date: Wed, 14 Jul 2010 12:45:03 -0400
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: SIDNEY-SPENSER: Renaissance rhetoric question
>
>
> Dear all,
>
> I would be grateful if someone out there can help me with a question about
> naming a familiar practice in Renaissance writing. Is there a specific term
> for the rhetorical strategy of praising someone or something by asserting
> that he/she/it is so awesomely splendid that words alone cannot express
> his/her/its splendor? I am working on the chronicler Edward Hall’s
> presentation of King Henry VIII in his famous *Union of the Two Noble and
> Illustrate Famelies of Lancastre & Yorke* (1548), and several times in his
> text Hall uses this technique to create a sense of wonder in readers for the
> sumptuous splendor of Henry and his court. For instance:
>
> In describing the young King Henry: “The features of his body, his goo[d]ly
> personage, his amiable vysage, his princely countenaunce…nedeth no
> rehersall, consideryng, that for lacke of cunning, I cannot expresse the
> giftes of grace and of nature, that God hath endowed hym with all.”
>
> In describing a feast attended by Francis I and Henry VIII during their
> meeting at the Field of Cloth of Gold: “To tel you the apparel of the
> ladies, their rych attyres, their sumptuous Juelles, their diversities of
> beauties, and the goodly behavyor from day to day syth the first meting, I
> assure you ten mennes wyttes can scace declare it.”
>
> In describing Henry’s visit to Calais in 1532 to meet Francis I (and to show
> off the new Lady Marquess of Pembroke, Anne Boleyn): “To tell the ryches of
> the clothes of estates, the basens and other vessels whiche was there
> occupied, I assure you my wit is insufficient…”
>
> [The last few lines of Donne’s “The Relic,” it seems to me, also employ a
> variation on this strategy.]
>
> In a conference paper I gave a while back, I referred to this strategy as
> “occupatio,” but in a 1977 article discussing that term, Henry A. Kelly
> argues that “occupatio” should only be used to describe a speaker’s
> addressing of an opponent’s argument before the opponent has a chance to
> bring it up him-/herself.
>
> Closer to the mark seems to be the term preterition/praeteritio, though the
> OED’s definition of this word as “a figure in which attention is drawn to
> something by professing to omit it” doesn’t quite capture the full effect of
> Hall’s rhetoric, which does not merely draw attention to a subject but
> specifically creates an aura of awe around it by claiming that the author
> simply cannot put its greatness into words. Nor does the label “occulatio”
> seem precisely to fit. Kelly suggests this term as a replacement for the
> use of “occupatio” when referring to a type of preterition in which a
> speaker seeks to suggest that “we are passing by, or do not know, or refuse
> to say that which precisely now we are saying” (the quote is from the
> definition of occupatio [translated as paralipsis in the Loeb Library
> translation] in *Rhetorica ad Herrenium* 4.27.37, which Kelly says classical
> scholars agree should correctly be the definition of “occulatio”).
>
> If anyone has an opinion about which term might best describe Hall’s
> strategy of “conveying praise by claiming that the subject is so
> praiseworthy it is beyond his ability properly to praise it,” I’d appreciate
> it!
>
> Thanks,
>
> Scott
>
> P.S. The H. A. Kelly article to which I referred above is “Occupatio as
> Negative Narration: A Mistake for ‘Occultatio/Praeteritio’," *Modern
> Philology* 74.3 (1977): 311-315.
>
>
> Scott Lucas
> Professor of English
> The Citadel, the Military College of South Carolina
> Charleston, SC 29409
>
> [log in to unmask]
>
>
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--
Jonathan P. Lamb
Department of English
University of Texas at Austin
1 University Station B5000
Austin TX 78712
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