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"The Ancient Greeks were rather obsessed with isocolon,
the modern world has rather forgotten it" (Mark Forsyth, The Elements
of Eloquence, 2013). (Peter Dazeley/Getty Images)
Updated June 06, 2017
Isocolon is
a rhetorical term for a succession
of phrases, clauses, or sentences of approximately equal length
and corresponding structure. Plural: isocolons or isocola.
An isocolon with three parallel members is known as a tricolon. A four-part isocolon is a tetracolon climax.
"Isocolon is particularly of interest," notes
T.V.F. Brogan, "because Aristotle mentions it in the Rhetoric as
the figure that produces symmetry and
balance in speech and, thus, creates rhythmical prose or even measures in verse"
(Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics, 2012).
Pronunciation
ai-so-CO-lon
Etymology
From the Greek, "of equal members or clauses"
Examples and Observations
(advertising slogan of Timex
watches)
Wouldn't you like to be a Pepper,
too? Dr. Pepper!"
(advertising jingle for Dr. Pepper
soft drink)
(Winston Churchill, speech given in
Manchester, England, on January 29, 1940)
(Orual in Till We Have
Faces: A Myth Retold by C.S. Lewis. Geoffrey Bles, 1956)
(James Joyce, A Portrait of
the Artist as a Young Man, 1917)
(G.K. Chesterton)
Effects Created by Isocolon
"Isocolon . . ., one of the most common and
important rhetorical figures, is the use of successive sentences, clauses,
or phrases similar in length and parallel in structure. . . . In some cases of
isocolon the structural match may be so complete that the number of syllables in each phrase is the same;
in the more common case the parallel clauses just use the same parts of speech in the same order. The
device can produce pleasing rhythyms, and the parallel structures it
creates may helpfully reinforce a parallel substance in the speaker's claims. . . .
"An excessive or clumsy use of the device can create
too glaring a finish and too strong a sense of calculation."
(Ward Farnsworth, Farnsworth's Classical English
Rhetoric. David R. Godine, 2011)
The Isocolon Habit
"Historians of rhetoric continually puzzle over why
the isocolon habit so thrilled the Greeks when they first encountered
it, why antithesis became, for a while,
an oratorical obsession. Perhaps it
allowed them, for the first time, to 'see' their two-sided arguments."
(Richard A. Lanham, Analyzing Prose, 2nd ed.Continuum,
2003)
The Difference Between Isocolon and
Parison
- "Isocolon is a sequence of sentences of equal length, as in Pope's
'Equal your merits! equal is your din!' (Dunciad II, 244), where
each sentence is assigned five syllables, iconizing the concept of equal
distribution. . . .
"Parison, also called membrum,
is a sequence of clauses or phrases of equal length."
(Earl R. Anderson, A Grammar of Iconism.
Fairleigh Dickinson Univ. Press, 1998)
- The Tudor rhetoricians do not make the
distinction between isocolon and parison. . . . The definitions of parison by
Puttenham and Day make it identical with isocolon. The figure was in great
favor among the Elizabethans as is seen from its schematic use not only
in Euphues, but in the work of Lyly's
imitators."
(Sister Miriam Joseph, Shakespeare's Use of the Arts
of Language.
Columbia Univ. Press, 1947)
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