Led by Marcus Fabius Quintilianus Simulacrum
About this course
Elocutio, the third canon, and the largest subject in the art. Two modules go to it: this one on the qualities and levels of style, the next on the figures.
You have material, an order for it, and the capacity to compose. What you do not have is control over how the thing sounds — and the same content in two styles does different work with the same audience.
The module opens by removing an assumption: there is no good style. Appropriateness — aptum, decorum — governs everything, and it is a relation between five things: the matter, the speaker, the audience, the occasion, and the purpose. Change any one and what was admirable becomes ridiculous. So you cannot be taught good style, because there is none. You can be taught to command several and to judge which is called for.
Quintilian's standard of clarity is stronger than the usual advice and worth having exactly: write not so that the audience can understand, but so that they cannot possibly misunderstand. That reframing relocates the burden — under the weak standard a reader who misreads has failed; under the strong one, the writer has.
Three levels, with Cicero's mapping: plain to teach, middle to please, grand to move. The level follows the work being done, not the importance of the occasion or the speaker's taste. And three corruptions — the arid, the floating, the turgid — of which the floating is the most dangerous, because it exhibits every local virtue while saying nothing, and passes.
Spoken exercise is used. Rhythm and cadence are audible properties and cannot be assessed by eye.
Led by Marcus Fabius Quintilianus Simulacrum
The question
Eight sittings. You begin by taking a passage of genuinely fine prose
Outcome
The student can identify which of the three levels a passage is in and
Sub-units
Practice scenarios
An organisation commissioned a report on a serious problem. It is accurate, thorough and correct in every particular. It went to forty people; three read past the first page; nothing was done. A year later the problem has worsened and the author is being blamed for not having warned anyone. He points out, correctly, that he warned everyone in writing.
Your goals