Chapter 11: Development

In session with what has been laid down is an excellence which they call development: it occurs whenever in narrative or forensic speeches which, in accordance with their periods, admit many starting points and pauses, one great passage is wheeled in on top of another and is driven in on top of the passage which is increasing in force. 2. And whether this development comes by addressing oneself to commonplaces or by being powerful—by a strengthening either of matters or of arguments—or by building up works or emotions (you see, there are thousands of forms of development), all the same the public speaker must know that none of these methods by itself, apart from sublimity, can be established as complete, unless, as I see it, it is in lamentations or—heaven knows—in belittlings; but for other methods of development, whenever you take out the sublime, it is as if you took the soul out of the body. For the effectiveness immediately loses its pitch and is emptied, unless strengthened by sublimities. 3. Certainly, though, for the sake of lucidity, we ought to define how these current pronouncements differ from what was said just before (when we presented a kind of sketch of the high points we would take up and arranged them into a unity) and how generally sublimities differ from developments.

Commentary

in session with: for the metaphor, see ch. JO, n. on in session together. Longi­ nus links chs. 10 and 11 by this meta­ phor and by the phrase which follows.

development: the older term is “amplifi­ cation.” In 7.3, Longinus had used the term “underdevelopment” (see note there).

Aristotle gives no formal definition of development; for him both it and its opposite are enthymemes (Rhetoric l 403al6 ff.). He specifies, though, that it is particularly suited to epideictic speeches (Rhetoric 1368a27). Quintilian (8.4) distinguished five kinds of de­ velopment:

• Development in the term itself: e.g., instead of saying that a man was beaten up, saying that he was killed or slaughtered or massacred.
• Development by increment: e.g., Shy­ lock’s speech in The Merchant of Venice (III.i): “Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, di­ mensions, senses, affections, pas­ sions? Fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer as a Chris­ tian is?”
• Development by comparison: e.g., “If my slaves feared me as your fel­ low citizens fear you, I would leave my house” (Cicero, Catiline 1.7).
• Development by deduction: e.g., “In his slaves’ quarters there were purple carpets which belonged to Pompey”- from which we are to deduce what his own quarters were like.
• Development by accumulation: e.g., “it is an offence to tie up a Roman citizen, a crime to beat him, almost treason to put him to death. What shall I say it is to crucify him?”

Longinus did not like the rather gener­ alized definitions given by the rhetorical handbooks, as he makes clear in chs. 11 and 12.

Excellent specimens of development can be found in such authors as John Donne (the prose) and Sir Thomas Browne, where it generally contributes to sublimity; in Lyly’s Euphues, how­ ever, the device too often tries to stand by itself, apart from sublimity, and suffers just what Longinus says it does. Here are two passages from John Donne, one from an early, one from a late work, in which development is used poorly and well:

That women are inconstant I with any man confess, but that inconstancy is a bad quality, I against any man will maintain. For everything, as it is one better than another, so is it fuller of change. The heavens themselves continually turn, the stars move, the moon changeth; fire whirleth, air flyeth, water ebbs and flows, the face of the earth altereth her looks, time stays not; the colour that is most light will take most dyes. So in men, they that have the most reason are the most intoler­ able in their designs, and the darkest or most ignorant do sel­ domest change; therefore women changing more than men have also more reason. They cannot be immutable like stocks, like stones, like the earth’s dull center. Gold that lyeth still, rusteth; water, cor­ rupteth; air that moveth not, poi­ soneth; then why should that which is the perfection of other things be imputed to women as greatest imperfection.(Paradoxes I)

Perchance he for whom this bell tolls may be so ill as that he knows not it tolls for him. And per­ chance I may think myself so much better than I am as that they who are about me, and see my state may have caused it to toll for me, and I know not that. The church is catholic, universal: so are all her actions. All that she does belongs to all. When she baptizes a child, that action con­ cerns me; for that child is thereby connected to that head which is my head too, and engraffed into that body whereof I am a member. And when she buries a man, that action concerns me. All mankind is of one author, and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated.

See also the passage from Euphues quoted in ch. 3, n. on Gorgias of Leon­ tini; the one from Johnson quoted in ch. 4, n. on comparative judgement; and that from Sir Thomas Browne quoted in ch. 8, n. on selection of words and the trope and “made up” elabora­ tion of style.

with their periods: Russell and Grube both argue that the term cannot here refer to the period, or periodic sentence, as it is known. They differ on whether Longinus’ only other use of the term (ch. 40.1) does. It is best to take both passages as doing so.

The periodic sentence is by nature suitable for amplification and great­ ness. As Aristotle defines it (Rhetoric 1409a35), a periodic sentence is one which “has a beginning and an end and a greatness which can be seen easily at once.” Demetrius (On Style 11-22) be­ gins his discussion of periods with Aris­ totle’s definition; he then offers an expla­ nation of the term—it is drawn from racing, where runners start at one point, make a circle, and return.

Normally we take the periodic sen­ tence to be a long sentence; to the ancient rhetoricians, the good periodic sentence consisted of no fewer than two clauses and no more than four. Such clauses could themselves, however, be very short: Hermogenes (On Invention, Spengel II.240) quotes as an example of a “concise” period one containing only six words. The period in the ancient sentence was, moreover, closely con­ nected with vocal delivery, and Diony­ sius specifies that a period should be no greater than the full breath of a man. (In fact, the term “breath” itself became a rhetorical term.) But what is important in the good period is to have enough clauses to allow for a tum or bend. Without such, the name “period” or “road around” is not appropriate.

Dionysius, in his book On Composi­ tion ( I9), remarks that “the best style is that which has the most places for rest­ ing.” “Places for resting” is the very term Longinus uses to open his discus­ sion of development. Since Longinus is using the term “development” in a much broader sense than do the rhetori­ cal handbooks, we need not be surprised to find that “development” is not gener­ ally associated in the handbooks with the periodic sentence. Dionysius will use both periodic and non-periodic sentences; the sentences which are peri­ odic will be composed now of long clauses, now of short clauses. Two pla­ ces for resting, then, exist in the best style: 1) between periodic and non­ periodic sentences; 2) within the clauses of a periodic sentence. Since Longinus is speaking here of development—a term which supposes that one subject is receiving extended treatment—it is reasonable to assume that he has in mind the periodic sentence as the kind most appropriate for such treatment. And in fact, most of the sentences given as illustrations of development are of the periodic style.

pauses: If Longinus has the periodic sentence in mind, then the pauses may refer metaphorically to those points in the race-course where the runner­ rhetorician makes a turn, a good moment for strategic shifts.

wheeled in … passage which is increas­ ing in force: the images are drawn from the stage. “Wheel in” refers to the device used in Greek theatres to wheel in char­ acters who cannot walk—e.g., Ajax in Sophocles’ Ajax or the old man in Menander’s Dyscolus—because they are dead or crippled; such moments are always ones of great pathos. The verb “drive in” is also a theatrical term used for bringing persons onto the stage. The phrase we have translated “increas­ ing in force” literally means “upward steps” or even “rungs of a ladder”; it is exactly correspondent to our word “climax,” in sense and etymology.

commonplaces: these are defined by the anonymous Art of Rhetoric (Spengel 1.448) as the kind of starting point in an argument which anyone might use. Theon, in his Progymnasmata (Spen­ gel II.I06), says that they are speeches of development dealing with mistakes and manly deeds; in other words, they deal with the kind of matter about which most men have something to say. Lon­ ginus, in his comparison of Cicero and Demosthenes, suggests that Cicero ex­ celled in his use of commonplaces, which are especially suited to introduc­ tions and perorations, where large gen­ eral statements come in best. Cicero is supposed to have kept a file of introduc­ tions for use on appropriate occasions. See below, ch. 12, n. on topics.

arguments: The word refers to the kind of argument used in ordinary discus­ sions rather than strictly philosophical proofs. Perhaps the full phrase here (“matters or arguments”) is best taken as a hendiadys meaning “practical argu­ ments.”

unless … belittlings: the rhetoric of the phrasing is to be noticed. In addition to the oath “heaven knows,” Longinus has put in the particle noting an infer­ ential surprise—here translated “I see it.” Longinus is managing the illusion of a conversational tone, and he wishes to suggest that he has just thought of a couple of exceptions to his own huge generalization, embodied in this long sentence. Lamentations are, of course, a low form of emotion and hence by nature not sublime; belittlings are the inverse of development and also, by nature, cannot be sublime.

just before: in ch. 10, especially at the beginning.

high points … into unity: Longinus here hints, rather broadly, at his own imitative technique: just as Sappho, Homer, and Demosthenes had been praised for their powers of selecting high points and setting them together into unity (I0.1.3), so Longinus indi­ cates that he has done the same thing in his sketch of their art.