• About
  • GCA and the need for funds
  • How to follow Ninevoices
  • Publications
  • Writings

ninevoices

~ Nine writers on reading and writing.

ninevoices

Tag Archives: Philip Larkin

‘The Elements of Eloquence’

14 Tuesday Feb 2017

Posted by ninevoices in Ed, Grammar, Read Lately, Words

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

Bible, Dashiel Hammett, Elvis Presley, Lennon & McCartney, Mark Forsyth, PG Wodehouse, Philip Larkin, Procol Harum, Rolling Stones, Shakespeare, ST Coleridge, Wordsworth

“‘I wandered lonely as a cloud …’ Clouds are not lonely. Especially in the Lake District where Wordsworth wrote that line. In the Lake District clouds are remarkably sociable creatures that bring their friends and relatives and stay for weeks. … It’s not that Wordsworth didn’t know about meteorology, it’s that he did know about metaphor.” (Mark Forsyth)

elements-of-eloquence

I distrust books that have blazoned on the cover, “I laughed out loud”. But in the case of The Elements of Eloquence – How to Turn the Perfect English Phrase, I did too. My fellow travellers on the train to Rochester pretended not to notice.

In this book Mark Forsyth explains figures of speech (39 in all) used by writers good and not-so-good over the last 500 years, with examples and comment. Shakespeare, the Bible, William Blake, Leonard Cohen – they’re all here. This is a great read in its own right, and also a mine for the writer aspiring to write better.

Take Merism. This is when you don’t say what you’re talking about, but instead name all of its parts, as in “For better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health”, when you could just say “in all circumstances”…

Or Polyptoton, the repeated use of one word as different parts of speech or in different grammatical forms, eg Lennon & McCartney’s Please Please Me. Or the Bard in Richard II – “Grace me no grace, nor uncle me no uncle”.

Enallage, a deliberate grammatical mistake – “Love me tender” works where “Love me tenderly” wouldn’t. Unadverbial Elvis.

When Mick Jagger, singing of his honky tonk woman, tells us that “She blew my nose, and then she blew my mind,” he is demonstrating his use of Syllepsis, where one word is used in two (or more) incongruous ways.

There are Transferred Epithets, when the adjective is applied to the wrong noun, as in Wodehouse: “His eyes widened and an astonished piece of toast fell from his grasp.”

We all know Hyperbole: Dashiel Hammett on a private eye: “He … could have shadowed a drop of salt water from Golden Gate to Hong Kong without losing sight of it.”

Philip Larkin’s most famous line, we learn, is an example of Prolepsis, when you use a pronoun before saying what it stands for. We don’t know who They are, until we’re told they’re Your Mum and Dad. Doesn’t work the other way round, does it?

‘The Fourteenth Rule’ – Mark Forsyth’s own term – is that a number can give an apparent significance. The “sixteen vestal virgins” in Whiter Shade of Pale work so much better than “several vestal virgins”.     The Spirit that follows the Ancient Mariner’s doomed ship does so “Nine fathoms deep”.  (What was so special about 54 feet down?)

And many more, as they used to say on compilation albums …

Great entertainment, and you’re learning while you laugh! Published in 2014 by Icon Books Ltd, ISBN 978-184831733-8 RRP £7-99

 

Barbara Pym and Jane Austen

22 Sunday May 2016

Posted by ninevoices in Books, Tanya

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Alexander McCall Smith, Barbara Pym, Jane Austen, Philip Larkin, Salley Vickers, Virago Modern Classics

Jane Austen is even more revered in America than in the UK – if that is possible. The same might be said of Barbara Pym whom Alexander McCall Smith described as ‘a modern Jane Austen’. Both authors have distinctive instantly recognisable voices; prose which can be savoured over and over again.

Salley Vickers in her introduction to the Virago Modern Classics edition of Barbara Pym’s Less Than Angels explains the points of resemblance between the novels of the two authors as being ‘similarly restrained in tone, with that glimmering undersheen of English irony’. It is this perhaps that appeals so much to Americans.

At a recent meeting of the Barbara Pym society in London where members heard an altogether delightful lecture about servants and home help of all kinds in her novels it was noticeable that it was the Americans in the audience who asked the more rigorous questions. Barbara Pym’s work is included alongside Jane Austen in English literature degree syllabuses at American universities.

So-called quiet novels are liable to last longest in the collective consciousness, argues Salley Vickers, and that ‘nothing in Jane Austen’s lifetime compares with her current popularity; her tombstone in Winchester Cathedral makes no mention of her career as a writer.’

A connection between the two novelists that is particularly appealing is when Barbara Pym wrote to Philip Larkin: ‘Here I am sixty-one (it looks worse spelled out in words) and only six novels published – no husband, no children.’ He wrote back: ‘Didn’t Jane Austen write six novels and not have a husband or children?’

 

 

 

 

 

 

Subscribe

  • Entries (RSS)
  • Comments (RSS)

Archives

  • June 2023
  • May 2023
  • April 2023
  • March 2023
  • February 2023
  • January 2023
  • December 2022
  • November 2022
  • October 2022
  • September 2022
  • August 2022
  • July 2022
  • June 2022
  • May 2022
  • April 2022
  • March 2022
  • February 2022
  • January 2022
  • December 2021
  • November 2021
  • September 2021
  • August 2021
  • July 2021
  • June 2021
  • May 2021
  • April 2021
  • March 2021
  • February 2021
  • January 2021
  • December 2020
  • November 2020
  • October 2020
  • September 2020
  • August 2020
  • July 2020
  • June 2020
  • May 2020
  • April 2020
  • March 2020
  • February 2020
  • January 2020
  • December 2019
  • November 2019
  • October 2019
  • September 2019
  • August 2019
  • July 2019
  • June 2019
  • May 2019
  • April 2019
  • March 2019
  • February 2019
  • January 2019
  • December 2018
  • November 2018
  • October 2018
  • September 2018
  • August 2018
  • July 2018
  • June 2018
  • May 2018
  • April 2018
  • March 2018
  • February 2018
  • January 2018
  • December 2017
  • November 2017
  • October 2017
  • September 2017
  • August 2017
  • July 2017
  • June 2017
  • May 2017
  • April 2017
  • March 2017
  • February 2017
  • January 2017
  • December 2016
  • November 2016
  • October 2016
  • September 2016
  • August 2016
  • July 2016
  • June 2016
  • May 2016
  • April 2016
  • March 2016
  • February 2016
  • January 2016
  • December 2015
  • November 2015
  • October 2015
  • September 2015
  • August 2015
  • July 2015
  • June 2015
  • May 2015
  • April 2015
  • March 2015
  • February 2015
  • January 2015
  • December 2014
  • November 2014
  • October 2014
  • September 2014
  • July 2014
  • April 2014
  • February 2014
  • October 2013
  • September 2013
  • August 2013
  • July 2013
  • June 2013
  • May 2013
  • April 2013

Categories

  • 2017 Hysteria Writing Competition
  • Adventure
  • Agents
  • Alan Bennett
  • Amazon Self-Publishing Award
  • Art
  • audiobooks
  • Authors
  • Autobiography
    • Claire Tomalin
    • Stephen King
  • Barbara Pym
    • A Glass of Blessings
  • BBC1
  • Being a writer
  • Bestsellers
  • Biography
  • Book etiquette
  • Book Recommendation
  • Books for Christmas
  • Bookshops
  • Bridport Longlist Published
  • Cecily
  • challenge
  • Characters
  • Children's books
  • Christopher Fielding
  • Classics
  • clergy
  • Collaboration
  • Colm Tóibín
  • Comedy
  • Coming up
  • Competition
  • Competition Win
  • Competition Winners
  • Competitions to Enter
  • Crime
  • criticism
  • Dame Hilary Mantel, Reith Lectures 2017, Historical Fiction
  • Dialogue
  • Diary/notebook extracts
  • Drama
  • eBooks
  • Elizabeth Gaskell
  • Exeter Novel Prize
  • Factual writing
  • Fame
  • feedback
  • Festivals
  • Film
  • Finding an Agent
  • Finishing that novel
  • Folk customs
  • Forty-six years
  • Fowey Festival Adult Short Story Competition. Daphne du Maurier
  • Genres
  • Get Your Novel Noticed
  • Getting down to it
  • Getting Published
  • Girls Gone By Publishers
  • Good Housekeeping Novel Competition
  • Grammar
  • Halloween Writing Competition
  • Heard lately
  • heroes
  • heroines
  • Historia
  • Historical
  • Historical Novels
    • book reviews
  • History
  • Homework
  • Horror
  • How to Write a Short Story
  • Humour
  • Hystyeria 6
  • Ideas
  • Imagery
  • Imagination and the Writer
  • Inspiration
  • Jane Austen
  • Jane Austen House Museum
  • L. M. Montgomery
  • Laptops and Coffin Lids
  • Location
  • Lockdown
  • Maggie
  • Management
  • manuscript services
  • Margaret Kirk
  • Marketing
  • McKitterick Prize
  • Memoir
  • Military
  • Mslexia
  • Mslexia Writer's Diary
  • Myslexia Magazine
  • Mystery
  • Mythology
  • Newly Published
  • Newly Published Author
  • News
    • Obituary
  • Ninevoices
    • Anita
    • Christine
    • Ed
    • Elizabeth
    • Jane
    • Maggie
    • Sarah
      • Competitions
    • Tanya
    • Valerie
  • Ninevoices' winning short story
  • Observations
    • Grammar
    • Words
  • On now
  • Orion Publishing
  • Our readers
  • Plot
  • PMRGCAuk
  • Poetry
  • Police Procedurals
  • Publish Your Book
  • Publishing
  • Punctuation
  • Puppy Dogs
  • Queen Elizabeth II
  • radio
  • Read Lately
    • Articles
    • Books
  • Reading
  • rejection
  • religion
  • Research
  • reviews
  • RNA Learning Programme
  • Romance
  • Romantic Novelists' Association
  • Sarah Dawson
  • Satire
  • Science fiction
  • Seamus Heaney
  • Searchlight Writing for Children Awards
  • Seen lately
  • Shadow Man
  • Short stories
  • Short Story Competition
  • Social Media
  • Spelling
  • Sport
  • Spotlight Adventures in Fiction
  • Structure
  • Style
  • submissions
  • Supernatural
  • Synopsis Writing
  • Technology
  • Television
  • The Bridport
  • The Bridport, Lucy Cavendish, Bath, Yeovil, Winchester
  • The Daily Mail Crime Novel Competition
  • The Impostor Syndrome
  • The Jane Austen House Museum
  • The London Magazine Novel Competition, Henshaw Press, Writing Magazine, Writers' Forum
  • The Mirror & the Light
  • The Servant, Getting Published
  • The Times
  • The Writing Life
  • Theatre
  • Thomas Hardy
  • Thrillers
  • Translation
  • Travelling hopefully
  • Uncategorized
  • Valerie
  • villains
  • Vocabulary
  • Volunteering
  • War
  • Websites
  • Westerns
  • Windsor Fringe Kenneth Branagh Award for New Drama Writing
  • Winning Competitions
  • Winning Writing Competitions
  • Witchcraft
  • Witches
  • Wolf Hall
  • Words
  • Writercraft
  • Writerly emotions
  • Writers' block
  • Writers' Forum
  • Writers' groups
  • Writing
    • Column
    • Drama
    • Fiction
    • Poetry
    • Stories
  • Writing Competitions to Enter
  • Writing conventions
  • Writing games
  • Writing Historical Fiction
  • Yeovil First Novel Competition

Meta

  • Register
  • Log in

Blog at WordPress.com.

Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use.
To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here: Cookie Policy
  • Follow Following
    • ninevoices
    • Join 271 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • ninevoices
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar
 

Loading Comments...