On the Sublime

This section comprises Longinus’s discussion of “figures”—rhetorical devices and figures of speech. While it is beyond the scope of his treatise to deal with every possible figure, he will touch on those that “complement greatness” (27).

Figures of speech “naturally reinforce greatness” in writing (29). Rhetorical questions and their answers can make a passage more successful and convincing. By asking a question and then answering it himself, the writer produced an effect of emotional spontaneity. An effect of urgent emotion is achieved by asyndeton, a literary device in which connective particles (like “and”) are omitted and the clauses proceed in a disconnected fashion. A similar device, hyperbaton, is an arrangement of words or ideas that imitates the flow of our thoughts, conveying a “living passion.” An even greater effect is accomplished when two or three of these figures are combined.

Other sources of greatness are to use plural nouns in sequence, or, the opposite, to designate separate things together, using a collective noun.

Other examples of figures that convey greatness, emotion, and immediacy are:

• The historic present, in which historical events are described in the present tense;
• Changing person abruptly during a speech (e.g., talking about a group of people in the third person, then suddenly speaking to them directly);
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