Writing Narrative in Progymnasmata

Narrative is one of the first exercises in rhetorical education, and we're approaching narrative first by reading, then by writing to a model, with specific variations or elaborations in mind. The essentials of the narrative are the 5 W's and an H: Who, What, Where, When, Why's, and How.

Narratives can be varied by changes in sequence (e.g. from Quintilian: "pursue it from the middle, either backwards or forwards..."), amplification with vivid details (amplificatio), or addition of dialogue or dialogismus. Additional rhetorical flourishes might include praise for the virtuous, censure for the immoral, summarization of the "take-home message" in the form of a commonplace .

We have just read the chapter on Narrative in D'Angelo's Composition in the Classical Tradition. Some of the choices of reading and writing passages are dreadful, but there are enough examples to choose from, and well-organized condensations of classical techniques of writing, that I found it one the easier books to work with in a homeschool.

The narrative variations that D'Angelo describes are: Condensed, Expanded, and Slanted (like The Three Little Pigs from the Wolf's Side of the Story. The four modes of narrative are Direct Declarative, Indirect Declarative ("It is often said that..."), Interrogative ("Why can't we do more?..."), and Comparative. The Comparative mode juxtaposes the good and the bad together to emphasize the differences or pattern of decision-making made by the individuals being discussed. This last variation is an interesting one, and I can see how it can also enrich the reading. In the example given, phrases such as "instead of" or "should have" are peppered throughout the key decisions made by Daedalus and Icarus, to highlight the mistakes they made (e.g. instead of asking King Minos, or he should have listened to his father).

In classical rhetoric, effective narration is seen as a complement to effective argumentation. From an abstract, "Both Cicero and Quintilian emphasized the place of narration in preparing and arranging orations. Argumentation was understood as the blending of several arts into a complex whole. Viewed as a whole, classical oration had two faces--logical and narrative proof. Proof (confirmatio) was the decontextualized, explicit, logical version of the narrative; and the narrative (narratio) was the contextualized, personalized, implicit version of the proof."

Our own first efforts will be more modest. We're going to rewrite some fables and myths using some variations and employing specific rhetorical figures. We'll post them if they don't look too bad. Do you have any to share? If so please share them with us as comments. We'd love to see 'em.

Writing with Voice
Writing Dialogue
Language Arts: Adding Descriptive Language and Dialogue

Narration and Argumentation - Abstract

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