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way to express something (1999, p. 22). Surveying the range of theoretical perspectives on the figures, Fahnestock observes that “expressions available for a particular function [exist] on a continuum” rather than being distinct categories of “the literal and the figurative” (1999, p. 22). At the far end of this continuum are “iconic” expressions characterized by Fahnestock as “epitomes” (1999, p. 22). In other words, figures are “formal embodiments of certain ideational and persuasive functions” (1999, p. 22). As epitomes, figures are idealized forms representing some “line of reasoning” or a “condensed or even diagram-like rendering of a relationship among a set of terms” (1999, p. 24).
This notion that figures are inventional topoi made visible and hence forceful does much to re-establish their centrality and to explain their ubiquity in discourse of all types. Indeed, Fahnestock’s epitomizes her argument through the figure of oxymoron in the title of her book, Rhetorical Figures in Science, insofar as science is typically regarded as unadorned, even figure-free, discourse. If rhetorical figures such as antithesis (paired contrasts in balanced phrases), gradatio (stepwise amplification or progression) and polyptoton (repetition of words with shared roots) function as arguments in scientific discourse, a fortiori they do so in many other discursive domains.
Fahnestock emphasizes the argumentative dimension of figures—style in relation to invention. Chris Holcomb underscores their performative character as style in relation to delivery. In “Anyone Can Be President,” Holcomb argues that figures “do more than simply organize or cue other performative elements. They also constitute the performance as such. Working in oral discourse in concert with changes in pitch, volume, pacing, and gesture, the figures help define and manage relationships among speaker, listeners, and subject matter” (Holcomb, 2007, p. 74) Here, Holcomb draws attention to figures as sites of oral and bodily performance. As writing, the figures retain their association with embodied performance. Holcomb’s central observation is that the figures must be understood in their capacity to mediate social relations between speakers and audiences, between writers and readers. In this respect, the virtue of ornament is closely tied to the virtue of decorum, or appropriateness. For Holcomb, then, the figures function as an amalgam of cultural form and social practice. This notion of style as “cultural performance” is the focus of Holcomb and Killingsworth’s essay in this volume (“Teaching Style”).
Having identified the ornamental dimension of style as simultaneously a matter of argument and performance, I have yet to address the vexed efforts to categorize the profusion of figures within rhetorical tradition in formal and functional terms. Efforts to do so begin with Aristotle’s account of style in Book III of the Rhetoric, the foundational text for stylistic analysis. Here, Aristotle presents the first definition of metaphor in semantic terms as a word-level substitution involving some deviation from ordinary or accepted meaning (1991, 3.2.6). From this proto-category of analogical reasoning and expression will develop the tropes involving some turn of phrase, including metonymy, synecdoche, simile and personification. Three hundred years later, the influential Rhetorica ad Herennium (c. 90 BCE)—for centuries erroneously attributed to Cicero—provides the first comprehensive catalogue of the figures, sixty four in all. Here is the first effort to divide the figures between those that involve a departure in meaning at the word level, the tropes, and those whose effects depend on a deviation from expected or natural word order, the schemes (Greek schemata translates into Latin figura.).
The ad Herennium is also the first effort to distinguish figures of diction (figurae dictionis) from figures of thought (figurae sententiae). The latter depends not on particular choice of expression but on performative functions, including description, comparison, commemoratio (dwelling on a point at length) and dimunitio (understatement). Placing understatement with figures of thought, as the ad Herennium does, rather than with the tropes, where figures of distortion such as hyperbole or litotes have traditionally been placed, indicates how overlapping are these categories. Complicating matters further, the author of ad Herennium imagines the tropes to be a subset of figures of speech. Two centuries later, Quintilian, in his Institutio Oratio (c. 90 CE), places tropes into a category distinct from either the figures of diction or of thought.
Throughout rhetorical tradition, taxonomic relations continue to be contested and further categorizations proposed. Renaissance scholar Philip Melanchthon, in Institutiones Rhetorices (1519), divides tropes into those based in words (e.g., metaphor, various forms of pun) and in larger units of discourse (e.g., irony, allegory) and also rearranges the schemes to include a major heading of amplification for figures that elaborate, qualify or digress to rhetorical effect. These multiple and conflicting efforts in categorization reveal the figures to be far more than a matter of embellishment to lend distinction to one’s speech.
In her essay “Aristotle and Theories of Figuration,” Jeanne Fahnestock reads Book III of Aristotle’s Rhetoric in light of subsequent treatments of the figures within rhetorical tradition. Although Aristotle appears to say very little about the figures, apart from discussing metaphor, Fahnestock observes that Aristotle identifies three figures in metaphor, antithesis, and energeia, or bringing something before the eyes. She recognizes these figures as epitomes for what will later develop into categories of tropes, figures of diction, and figures of thought. In other words, Aristotle anticipates the broader bins of a rich catalogue of formal devices and performative moves. These bins correspond to “semantic, syntactic, and pragmatic components of discourse” identified, respectively in tropes, figures of diction, and figures of thought (Fahnestock, 2000, p. 127). Aristotle thus anticipates subsequent theorizing of figurative in recognizing early on that verbal effects are more than optional decoration.
Against this backdrop, a gradual dissipation of a once vibrant figurative tradition in the modern era, following a high water mark in the Renaissance, is all the more striking. Holcomb singles out as arguably the richest account of the figures Henry Peacham’s Garden of Eloquence (1590), which identifies over two hundred figures, insightfully analyzes their formal and functional properties, and considers the social dimensions of their use. After such careful tending to these “flowers” of rhetoric, the subsequent waning of the figures as a stylistic resource becomes symptomatic of rhetoric’s slow decline until more recent stirrings in the latter half of the twentieth century. What happened?
Isolating one factor among many in this development, Fahnestock points to the separation of invention from style in the de-coupling of topical patterns of reasoning and rhetorically expressive figures. Noting that the topics and the figures were once cross-fertilizing contributors to rhetorical aptitude, Fahnestock cites the disparate fortunes of metaphor, the prototypical semantic figure, and antithesis, the prototypical syntactic figure. In the modern era, metaphor emerges as the master trope to the near exclusion of other figurative devices. By comparison, the scheme of antithesis, an epitomizing form for contrastive reasoning, has lost much of its status over time as a valued figure. As a result, antithesis functions as a fine barometer for the eventual association of “the figurative” with poetic modes of discourse; for absent a scene of argumentation, antithesis seems merely a device for heightening contrast.
This separation of the structures of reasoning from the structures of expression reflects a broader historical development in which written language, especially in the medium of print, displace oratory as the paradigmatic mode of communication. Under the influence of Peter Ramus (1515-1572), rhetoric’s scope was to become much more limited with the reassignment of the canons of invention and arrangement to dialectical methods of reasoning. With print the canons of memory and delivery also atrophy, so that only style remains as a canon. Rhetoric becomes virtually synonymous with style, conceived in a superficial sense as the dress of thought—artful spin. In this development, the figures, the most performative aspect of style, fare especially poorly and attain their status as a catalog of verbal embellishment.
It is possible to locate an historical and conceptual divide between rhetoric and composition by the perceived value of the figures. In the movement from rhetoric, conceived as training in the performance art of public speaking, to composition, understood as practice in conventions of written prose, the figures are slowly drained of their compelling force. As exemplified in the highly influential Rhetoric and Belles Lettres of Hugh Blair (1718-1800), prose style becomes associated with matters of taste, an elevation of the virtue of decorum, or appropriateness, as the divide between