Mo's Rather Interesting World of Figures of Speech and Other Rhetorical Devices

[undyingking]

#1 in an occasional series -- your challenge is to use it at least once today.

Hysteron proteron

Literally, something like "latter first".

Means: transposing the natural order of concepts in a sentence, ie. putting the cart before the horse. An example from Shakespeare: "Th' Antoniad, the Egyptian admiral,/ With all their sixty, fly and turn the rudder" -- actually they turn the rudder and then fly, but this way round it supposedly has more rhetorical force (and better fits the scansion).

I don't think people really use this device these days, it feels rather forced. I guess a related modern practice though is for the second concept to be a modifying clause, eg "I'm going home, after I send this email" rather than the natural sequence "I'll send this email, then I'm going home" -- the effect is to emphasize the going home, and to suggest that the email is less important.

Comments

[secondhand-rick.livejournal.com]

You read my responses, and I write them!

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

Mm, that's a good one, as it further suggests continuity of the process in a kind of inevitable dance of death way.

[secondhand-rick.livejournal.com]

The puppet dances, and the puppet-master pulls the strings!

Not sure which of us is which, mind you.

[wimble.livejournal.com]

To use the specific phrase, or to use an example of it, is the point?

(Oh God, Yoda, sound like I!)

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

An example of it (and no, I don't think that counts ;-)

[cardinalsin.livejournal.com]

Being a lazy git, I am refreshing LJ a lot today. Each time I scroll past this post, I see the title as something like "Mysteron Proton".

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

That would also be rather interesting, but probably quite different...

[the-elyan.livejournal.com]

Would you accept the descriptive phrase from Under Milk Wood:

"And the dogs in the wet-nosed yards"?

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

Hmm, don't think so, I think an implied temporal sequence is required. There's probably another name for that one... let's see later in the series!

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

From a formal syntax point of view, it's worth noting that the logical binary operator "and" is commutative.

As such "fly and turn the rudder" is exactly the same thing as "turn the rudder and fly", provided one does not insist upon reading "and" as "then".

I might well say something like "I'm going to go out to the shop and post this letter", when in fact the geography of my trip will mean the letter is posted before I reach the shop. I think this is an example of the aforementioned commutativity in action. The intention is emphasis, but I'm pretty sure this would qualify as hysteron proteron and is quite at home in the modern world.

(Ding ! That's my one usage covered, then.)

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

Mmm, that's how the device gets its rhetorical force, I think -- in situations where an implied natural time sequence has accustomed people to reading 'and' as 'then', use of and's commutativity shocks them into paying attention / thinking about the implications / whatever.

(And good example!)

[sea-of-flame.livejournal.com]

Into the room, with a loud bang, walked my mother - Pliny the Younger had it down pat in his description of the eruption of Vesuvius, if I understand your description of the grammtical wotsit correctly - although the above is more of a contextual 'zoom' effect: "pan around room: release sound effect: enter mother, stage left"

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

Sounds like mother is wicked witch of the west! -- but yes, I think Pliny the Younger probably contains examples of all of these devices, he does seem to have been rather fond of his rhetorical training...

[sea-of-flame.livejournal.com]

A lot of Latin writing was designed to be read aloud/recited to an audience, so there was more use for said devices for dramatic effect. Also, Latin's a language where a word's position ion a sentence has no grammatical effect, so it was actually rather easier to jumble the parts of the sentence to achieve the most pleasing/dramatic/poetic effect - it CAN be done to a certain extent in English, but it ends up sounds clumsy...

[jackfirecat.livejournal.com]

Splishes, the frog
Hysteron proterond
A quiet old pond