Poetically capturing catchiness (part 6)

Writing is as straightforward as we make it. Some prefer it simple and succinct, some prefer the outlandish and bizarre, but some… prefer the eloquent – which can often contain both bizarre and succinct writing styles melded together. Mark Forsyth’s book The Elements of Eloquence: How to Turn the Perfect English Phrase unveils the many literary techniques used in English. In this article, we examine his thoughts on the literary trio of hendiadyses, epistrophes and tricolons.

Do you see a duck, a rabbit or something else? A hendiadys is like an optical illusion – what you interpret of it may mean something else to another person!]

Handling hendiadyses
Dubbed one of the “most elusive and tricky of all rhetorical tricks” by Forsyth, a hendiadys is an instance where the adjective in an adjective-noun pairing is converted into the base noun (i.e. lovely becomes love). It’s confusing because no one (other than the author) really knows if a hendiadys is being used or not – here’s why:

 Let’s start with an adjective and noun in a sentence like “Bob liked the colourful displays.” Applying the hendiadys, it becomes “Bob liked the colours and displays.” As the writer, we know we intended colours and displays to mean a colourful display, but for anyone who’s reading just the hendiadys, they may interpret it as “Bob liked the many colours and varieties of displays.”

Even across history, Forsyth pointed out that there were many instances that may or may not have been hendiadys – i.e. Saint Paul telling the Philippians to “work out your salvation with fear and trembling” could either mean “fearful trembling”, “trembling fear” or “with both fear and trembling” (in which case, it isn’t a hendiadys at all!). Hendiadys can be applied to adverb-adjective pairings to transform them into adjective-adjective pairings (i.e. “nice and hot tea” becomes “nicely hot tea”) and also a “double verb form” (i.e. “trying to do” becomes “try and do”).

In all the confusion that hendiadyses can stir up, what possible good can it have? To Forsyth, the confusion can be wonderful. “An English teacher will tell you that the purpose of the adjective is to describe the noun… not in hendiadys and not in Shakespeare. Here you just get nouns lined up… and though they are holding hands, you can’t tell which is in charge,” he explains. “‘The morn and liquid dew of youth’ is beautiful, but bewildering. So is ‘the grace and blush of modesty’, and ‘the dead vast and middle of the night’.”

The repetition of hallelujah in Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” can be found at the end of every verse and as a transition between each verse. Although it appears repetitive, using epistrophes add to the catchiness of the lyrics!

Ending on an epistrophe
An epistrophe is a condition where you end each clause, sentence or paragraph with the same word or phrase. It’s a rather popular technique amongst lyric writers as well, with Forsyth pointing at Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah”, George Gershwin’s “The Man I Love” or Don McLean’s “American Pie”.  

Epistrophe’s popularity in lyrics can be traced to the way many songs are structured – the repetition of the chorus section naturally attracts lyrical repetition. “It’s the trope of emphasising one point again and again,” wrote Forsythe. “It’s the trope of not being able to escape that one conclusion, which is one of the reasons that songs are so suited to the idea of obsessive love, political certainty and other such unhealthy ideas.”

Moving away from lyrics, epistrophe is “subtler” in spoken and written English – think of Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, which proclaimed “government of the people, by the people, for the people”. Lincoln’s quick repetition of the people can be considered an empathetic “jabbing the air for emphasis.” However, Forsythe believes that delaying each epistrophe could achieve even greater impact, the most notable example being Barrack Obama’s presidential victory speech. Even if you don’t really remember what he spoke about, you definitely remember the iconic: “Yes, we can.”

Although epistrophe can be used to bring hope and positivity, Forsythe notes that it’s used best when expressing anger and trouble. Take, for example, Shakespeare’s Henry V when King Henry confronts the captured traitors:

            “Show men dutiful?

            Why, so didst thou: seem they grave and learned?

            Why, so didst thou: come they of noble family?

            Why, so didst thou: seem they religious?

            Why, so didst thou.”

“You know he’s angry. You know that they aren’t getting out of this one, and indeed they don’t,” describes Forsythe. “Wherever you start, you’re going to finish with so didst thou. And whatever they say, their necks are marked for the chopping block… I suppose because death is the huge human epistrophe, and all biographies end the same way.” Regardless whether you wish to speak of hope or death, epistrophes and repetition are a great way to reinforce ideas.

Ever wonder why it’s the Three Wise Monkeys and not two or four? It all boils down to memorability and logic – “See no evil, hear no evil and speak no evil” works because it applies to the three senses that are most vulnerable to whatever “evil” may muster up. What about touching or smelling evil? Those are less likely to happen before you can hear or see it – and if you shield yourself so that you can’t see or hear it, you logically won’t be able to speak about it!

Triple tapping with tricolons
There’s something special about the magic number “three”. The Three Musketeers, the Three Stooges, the Powerpuff Girls… even when we speak or write, we like to list out three things at once – like the recipe for little girls being “sugar, spice and everything nice” or the infamous Ghostbusters quote: “We came, we saw, we kicked its ass!”

To better understand the phenomenon behind “three”, Forsyth points to the boringness of “two”. “Whenever the average human sees two things together, they connect them,” he explains – i.e. eat and drink are often connected because they are forms of ingestion, or they may be seen as opposites because one is a solid and the other a liquid. “Even if we take two things that don’t fit together, we’ll find something. Like mice and men (being small and big)… We see a pair and we see a pattern.”

When you include a third element, it becomes a tricolon – eat, drink and be merry; or Father, Son and Holy Spirit. “With a tricolon, you can set up a pattern and break it. ‘Lies, damned lies and statistics’ is a simple example.” To do so, you set up the first two words so that they steer the reader one way, then twist them away with the third – usually for comedic purposes or to surprise the reader – i.e. a loaf of bread, a jug of milk and a Playboy magazine. According to Forsythe, the lengthier the third item on the list, the greater its impact – like with life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, which is significantly punchier than just life, liberty and happiness.

There is a bit of a difficulty tied to the tricolon though. “Two’s company, three’s a list, and a list has to be complete.” For example, you can’t just say “the good and the bad” because it feels lacking – you need to include “the ugly” as well for the saying to be complete – or using an earlier example, Forsyth states that Father and Son only encompass a generational pairing, whereas the inclusion of The Holy Spirit completes the trinity as the embodiment of God. However, resist the temptation to list more than three things (lest you create a tetracolon). A list of four becomes forgettable: like with Winston Churchill’s quote “blood, toil, tears and sweat” – hardly anybody remembers toil and simply recites it as “blood, sweat and tears”.

Popular or not, every literary device has its use. To pep up a crowd, the epistrophe is a good choice. To give your readers a laugh or to surprise them, the tricolon is king. Or perhaps you want to keep the meaning of something open for interpretation, then the hendiadys may be of use. What other quirky and wonderful writing techniques can we use to improve our copy? Stay tuned to find out!

To check out the other literary devices we’ve covered in the past:
Part 1 – Alliterations and assonance
Part 2 – Polyptotons, antitheses, merisms and blazons
Part 3 – Hyperbatons, anadiplosis and periodic sentences
Part 4 – Parataxis and hypotaxis
Part 5 – Diacopes and rhetorical questions