Funny that Fred should blog about one (actually two) of the world's many -isms yesterday, since today my job has been to make sense of a whole shitload of such -isms. Yes, my morning was spent trying to make sense of kinds of prose style, ranging from Ciceronianism to Anti-Ciceronianism, and crossing over - fasten your seatbelts - archaism, Laconism, mannerism, Euphuism, Gongorism (also culteranism or cultism), Marinism (also concettism or secentism) and conceptism. Phew...
Now all of these are different ways to write. One might be plain and simple, harmonious and neatly balanced, the other laborious, affectated and even downright absurd. Obviously, we all know there's different ways of saying stuff, but I confess that even an academic freak like myself may still stand in awe of all these different -isms.
If you'd like to get a feel for how such a stylistic same shit, different way, might work, there is an interesting little book I can highly recommend: Raymond Queneau's Exercises in Style. The book tells the story of a man seeing the same stranger twice in one day, but it tells that short story in 99 different ways. And if you don't like reading that much, there's even an adaptation in a graphic novel of it.
Or, if you'd like to stay closer to the kind of -ism Fred used in his blog, i.e. the philosophical isms, you can check out Wikipedia's list which mentions several hundreds of them.
Of course, in the end thinking about stuff like this might result in one -ism to many, as might happen to me by the end of the day. The -ism I mean, is of course, the mother of all: alcoholism.
Cheers!
Now all of these are different ways to write. One might be plain and simple, harmonious and neatly balanced, the other laborious, affectated and even downright absurd. Obviously, we all know there's different ways of saying stuff, but I confess that even an academic freak like myself may still stand in awe of all these different -isms.
If you'd like to get a feel for how such a stylistic same shit, different way, might work, there is an interesting little book I can highly recommend: Raymond Queneau's Exercises in Style. The book tells the story of a man seeing the same stranger twice in one day, but it tells that short story in 99 different ways. And if you don't like reading that much, there's even an adaptation in a graphic novel of it.
Or, if you'd like to stay closer to the kind of -ism Fred used in his blog, i.e. the philosophical isms, you can check out Wikipedia's list which mentions several hundreds of them.
Of course, in the end thinking about stuff like this might result in one -ism to many, as might happen to me by the end of the day. The -ism I mean, is of course, the mother of all: alcoholism.
Cheers!
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