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    The Elements of Eloquence: Secrets of the Perfect Turn of Phrase
    The Elements of Eloquence: Secrets of the Perfect Turn of Phrase
    The Elements of Eloquence: Secrets of the Perfect Turn of Phrase
    Audiobook5 hours

    The Elements of Eloquence: Secrets of the Perfect Turn of Phrase

    Written by Mark Forsyth

    Narrated by Don Hagen

    5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    From classic poetry to pop lyrics, from Charles Dickens to Dolly Parton, even from Jesus to James Bond, Mark Forsyth explains the secrets that make a phrase-such as “O Captain! My Captain!” or “To be or not to be”-memorable.

    In his inimitably entertaining and wonderfully witty style, he takes apart famous phrases and shows how you too can write like Shakespeare or quip like Oscar Wilde. Whether you're aiming to achieve literary immortality or just hoping to deliver the perfect one-liner, The Elements of Eloquence proves that you don't need to have anything important to say-you simply need to say it well.

    In an age unhealthily obsessed with the power of substance, this is a book that highlights the importance of style.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAscent Audio
    Release dateNov 1, 2014
    ISBN9781469092294
    The Elements of Eloquence: Secrets of the Perfect Turn of Phrase

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    Reviews for The Elements of Eloquence

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    • 5/5
      Absolutely brilliant ?
      Not often that you hear a high brow book with Greek and Latin terms, have Shakespeare and Snoop quoted, and LAUGH OUT LOUD.
    • 5/5
      A wonderful wandering through a forest of rhetoric figures. A delightful book that is clever in every sense and bright in one.
    • 5/5
      As a writer, I’m interested in the technical information in the book - how some of the best authors in history utilized these building blocks called the figures of rhetoric in their craft. He doesn’t explain every figure in existence — just some of the ones more commonly used. What’s great about this book is how the author provides specific examples from classic literature.Aside from the fascinating content, what makes this book unique is the engaging manner in which it’s written. Forsyth makes learning about the figures of speech fun and entertaining. He cracks jokes and doesn’t take himself or the language too seriously.If you’re a word nerd, purveyor of prose, or literature lover, such as myself, then you should check out this book. Note: I just used several of the elements of rhetoric in that last sentence, but I won’t tell you which ones or how many. You’ll have to read the book for yourself to figure it out!
    • 5/5
      Forsyth makes a grandiloquent claim for school English language lessons; that they don’t teach the right thing. Instead of teaching the mechanics of English; how the writer achieves their effect, it focuses on what the writer thought and felt (and he illustrates this by querying Blake’s sanity). Given Forsyth’s fascination with etymology and the workings of the language it’s a fairly unsurprising position for him to take. To that end this book is a rhetoric handbook which outlines how a selection of the more common rhetorical tricks work; from alliteration to more obscure tricks such as epizeuxis and zeugma. He illustrates all this with examples ranging from Shakespeare to The Beatles and Snoop Dogg and is effusive when their use is effective and cutting when carelessness or inexperience lets them down – indeed he attributes Shakespeare’s mastery of the language to a lot of hard work and learning his linguistic tricks; a very modern viewpoint but one which is careful to dismantle simplistic notions such as Gladwell’s ’10,000 hours of practice’. For a language junkie like me who loves the tricks and effects a master can play with the language this is a marvel; a handbook to hack your own writing processes and seeing how they work. Forsyth’s work would be pointless if his prose was poor but happily it’s not; it’s crisp and clear. While it might occasionally be the equivalent of an old man cursing the kids for not doing things properly it’s also entertainingly done; the point that style is substance is well made. Perhaps, after all, what matters is the way we say things rather than what we say.It’s something of a chilling thought in many ways.
    • 4/5
      This is a mostly fascinating journey through a myriad of little tricks (e.g., rhetorical techniques) of how to create language that is memorable. The author uses a huge range of examples, ranging from popular culture to the classics. Many of the quotes are very familiar, but it is interesting to look at them under the microscope. As Forsyth points out, some of them don't even make sense taken literally, but the turn of phrase is so good, our senses and intellect just pass right over it. In other cases, phrases that made sense in their original form have mutated to shortened versions, such as "A miss is as good as a mile", where we understand the meaning, even though grammatically it is clearly missing a few words.The book covers over 30 types of rhetorical techniques, but other than a few, such as alliteration or assonance, their names are semi-unpronouncable Greek-derived terms you have probably never seen before and will certainly not remember. Honesty, a poster would be helpful. I could see hanging one over my desk that i could turn to if I were looking for an idea to spice up or improve something I was writing.Because there are so many techniques, and many of them are hard to tell apart (as the author admits near the end of the book), it grows tedious after a while. Most of the best stuff is toward the front of the volume. Forsyth's favorite author is clearly Shakespeare, who is quoted throughout, and he makes interesting observations about how Shakespeare's language changed over time and about how Shakespeare repeated (and usually improved upon) certain techniques.Another fascinating subject Forsyth discusses is the order of adjectives. In English, there is a very strict order we must follow. It is a big, blue ball--never a blue, big ball. Forty fierce British soldiers--not British fierce forty soldiers. The order is opinion-size-age-shape-color-origin-material-purpose-Noun. This seems to be hard-wired in our brains, since we were certainly never taught this in school, yet we use it unconsciously every day. This is the type of revelation that makes this book rewarding.Some reviewers have found the author to be a bit smug, and I can sympathize. He can never resist a jab, such as calling William Blake a "nutjob". His deep well of knowledge also is a bit incomplete on occasion. He correctly points out the fallacy of numerology, given that different cultures have different lucky and unlucky numbers, but he doesn't seem to understand that in the case of the Chinese, how these numbers were arrived at hasn't been lost in the dim, distant past, but stems simply from their resemblance to other words with identical sounds--thus 8 sounds like prosperity and 4 sounds like death.So, overall, for anyone interested in language this is probably a must read. But I was happy to see it end, and I'm not sure I'm ready to progress immediately into Forsyth's other works on language, which seem on the surface to be equally fascinating. but I probably won't be able to put it off forever...
    • 5/5
      A witty delivery of language devices one may not have known but used a thousand times. With humorous analogies to explain each device, it will probably be the most entertaining english lesson you'll ever have. A well written and entertaining book.
    • 5/5
      What a great book! Not something to read cover-to-cover, but something to pick up with regular periodicity and savor. Perfect for a writer's or editor's reference shelf.I've made anki-app cards (electronic flash cards?) for each of the categories, Forsyth gives myriad examples, often well known ones, and sometimes more obscure (subject to future reading, perhaps?).Alliteration, polyptoton, antithesis, merism, blazon, synaesthesia, aposiopesis, hyberbaton, andiplosis, periodic sentences, hypotaxis, parataxis, polysyndeton, asyndeton, diacope, hendiadys, epistrophe, tricolon, epizeuxis. syllepsis, isocolon, enallage, zeugma, paradox, chiasmus...and etc., and so forth and so on.
    • 4/5
      I was doing an English Access course and our teacher had briefly covered rhetoric with us when this was published - at just the right moment as it's an excellent introduction to the subject. I would have read it eventually anyway as I've read Forsyth's two previous books. They're both excellent too. Here he's as entertaining as ever. I like the joke about what will kill the cat in the future. I now cannot even read a Stephen King novel without noticing the lists of three.
    • 5/5
      What a delightful book! Forsyth dove (dived?) deep into the obscurities of rhetoric to enlighten this reader on the many many technical terms for the phrases, forms, devices, maneuvers (okay...I channeled Eddie Izzard on that one), figures, terms, etc. When he opened withEnglish teaching at school is, unfortunately, obsessed with what a poet thought, as though that were of any interest to anyone. Rather than being taught about how a poem is phrased, schoolchildren are asked to write essays on what William Blake thought about the Tiger; despite the fact that William Blake was a nutjob whose opinions, in a civilised society, would be of no interest to anybody apart from his parole officer. A poet is not somebody who has great thoughts. That is the menial duty of the philosopher. A poet is somebody who expresses his thoughts, however commonplace they may be, exquisitely. That is the one and only difference between the poet and everybody else.he got my attention!Packed with information, wonderfully expounded, reinforced with classic examples and peppered saltily with wit, this is a great resource. Forsyth says "This isn't a dictionary of rhetoric, nor was it meant to be." and yes, it is much more than a dictionary. And I don't know what the term would be, or of there even is one, for the opposite of cliffhanger, but Forsyth mastered it, ending each chapter with a tie to the next chapter. He even hyperlinked the last word (okay, word and number) back to the first chapter! Circular!Recommended.
    • 5/5
      Witty, wonderful and well worth a read.