Lecture
Amplification (Lat. amplificatio «expansion») — a stylistic figure consisting of a series of repeating speech constructions or individual words.
Amplification is one of the means of intensifying the poetic expressiveness of speech. As a stylistic device, amplification is expressed, for example, in the accumulation of synonyms and antitheses, or it may take the form of an ascending arrangement, that is, the arrangement of expressions relating to a single subject according to the principle of increasing significance, emotional force, and so on.
Amplification is a rhetorical device that strikes sharply at heightening perception, and this is exactly how orators have assessed it — as, for instance, did the great orator of antiquity Cicero, who held that amplification is the triumph of eloquence.
An entire poem may be built on amplification. Such, for example, is Alexander Pushkin's poem «Three Springs» or Joseph Brodsky's «Great Elegy for John Donne.»
For all, for all I thank Thee:
For the secret torments of passions,
For the bitterness of tears, the poison of a kiss,
For the vengeance of foes and the slander of friends;
For the ardor of my soul, squandered in the wilderness…— Lermontov, M. Yu. Thanksgiving
When, in the damp and rusted foliage,
The rowan's cluster reddens, —
When the executioner's bony hand
Drives the last nail into my palm, —
When over the leaden ripple of the rivers,
In the damp and grey heights,
Before the stern face of my homeland
I shall sway upon the cross…— Blok, A. A.
He takes it —
like a bomb,
he takes it —
like a hedgehog,
like a double-edged
razor,
he takes it,
like a rattling,
twenty-fanged
serpent,
two meters long.— Mayakovsky, V. V. Verses on the Soviet Passport
…I cherished a secret design,
I endured, I languished, and I suffered…— Lermontov, M. Yu. Mtsyri
He was like a clear evening:
Neither day nor night, — neither darkness nor light!…— Lermontov, M. Yu. The Demon
Do you look within yourself? — there is no trace left of the past:
Both joy and torment, and everything there is worthless…
| Figures of Speech | |
|---|---|
| Figures |
Adynaton • Allusion • Amplification • Anadiplosis • Anacoluthon • Anaphora • Antithesis • Antitheton • Apocope • Apostrophe • Attraction • Asyndeton • Hyperbaton •Homeoteleuton • Gradation (Climax, Anticlimax) • Distinctio • Zeugma • Isocolon • Nominative of theme • Inversion • Correctio • Mesarchia •Polyptoton • Polysyndeton • Oxymoron • Parallelism • Paronomasia • Parcellation • Periphrasis • Pleonasm • Prolepsis • Retardation •Rhetorical question • Rhetorical exclamation • Rhetorical address • Symploce • Solecism • Tautology • Exact repetition • Aposiopesis • Chiasmus • Exergasia •Ellipsis • Emphasis • Epiphora |
| Tropes |
Allegory • Antiphrasis • Asteism • Antonomasia • Hyperbole • Dysphemism • Irony • Pun • Catachresis • Litotes • Meiosis • Metaphor • Metonymy • Personification •Pathos • Periphrasis • Sarcasm • Synecdoche • Simile • Euphemism • Epithet |
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