Image Grammar

My favorite part of Harry Noden's Image Grammar is the section on parallel structure. Noden titles this chapter, 3, "The Artist's Rhythms." He talks about how you must "listen for the beat" (50). He writes that the "structures give prose a musical quality that adds emphasis and sound to central images" (50). I'm really interested in ways to incorporate music into the Language Arts classroom. During my 10-day unit, I used music to teach rhyme scheme, similarities between poetry back in the day and current music, the difference between tone and mood, and so on. I was actually a bit disappointed in myself for failing to see how grammar could be mixed with music in the classroom. This is one of the very first times I have heard of a non-lame way to teach parallel structure. Haha

On the next page, he talks about the rhythm of repetition. He shows an example from a letter that repeats the same phrase over and over, creating "an echo, a trancelike refrain" (51) This letter was most likely unintentionally using literal repetition. However, then he goes on to refer to Edgar Allen Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart" and how he repeatedly wrote "but the noise steadily increased" (51).

Noden continues on a few pages later to talk about the music and rhythms in political rhetoric. I took a rhetoric class last year and so I recognized the examples he cited, such as J.F.K.'s Inaugural Address. He writes that these speeches can serve as the best examples of parallel structure in the classroom, and that their rhythms "create the illusion of profundity" (59). I'm not into politics at all, but this actually made me look forward to the possibility of teaching a speech class!