Esther M. Zimmer Lederberg
Compar Parison Rhetorical Figure and Architecture

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The rhetorical figure of compar or parison "... belongs to the larger category of repitition, and repitition to the more general category of rhythm - a structural effect with musical, visual, and even tactile manifestations. Thus the figure of balance may be seen to assert itself in a variety of disciplines and sub-disciplines, notably Elizabethan prose and verse, the geometries of landscape gardening, the sartorial designs favoured by Elizabethan aristrocrats, religious and secular music by the likes of Gibbons and Byrd, ...". As an example, English architecture of the sixteenth century. 1

An asymmetrical architecture of a defensive feudalism passed into a new Tudor architecture that emphasized the castle as a showplace. The architecture shifted away from the inner court towards the exterior landscape. An elaborate façade based upon bilateral symmetry that reified the rhetorical figure of "compar" or "parison" to support a hierarchically stratified aristocracy was now emphasized. 2

1 Adamson, Sylvia; Alexander, Gavin; Ettenhuber, Katrin; (Eds.), "Renaissance Figures of Speech", Cambridge Univ. Press, 2007, Cahapter 2 (Russ McDonald), pp. 40, 41
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2 Adamson, Sylvia; Alexander, Gavin; Ettenhuber, Katrin; (Eds.), "Renaissance Figures of Speech", Cambridge Univ. Press, 2007, Cahapter 2 (Russ McDonald), pp. 51-53

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