G is for Gradatio
G is for gradatio (gra DA ti o). This one's probably in my top 5 favourite figures, even though it barely gets more than a passing mention (by its proper name) in the current leading handlists.
Lanham, for example, cross-lists it with climax, and Silva Rhetoricae doesn't even list it except as an "a.k.a" for climax. Climax, from the Greek for "ladder," doesn't quite capture the same sense of gradation the Latin term does, and it somewhat focuses attention on the "climactic" moment of the figure, rather than attending to the important degrees along the way. It means "mounting by degrees through linked words or phrases, usually of increasing weight and in parallel construction" (Lanham).
Here's a delightful example of gradatio from Howell's Familiar Letters via Lanham: "...of this wine may be verified that merry induction, that good wine makes good blood, good blood causeth good humours, good humours cause good thoughts, good thoughts bring forth good works, good works carry a man to heaven, ergo good wine carry a man to heaven."
An example from Silva Rhetoricae, illustrating the definition the figure is "[g]enerally, the arrangement of words, phrases, or clauses in an order of increasing importance, often in parallel structure" demonstrates the more purely climactic definition: "Miss America was not so much interested in serving herself as she was eager to serve her family, her community, and her nation."
The second part of the definition from Silva Rhetorica, that "[m]ore specifically, climax is the repetition of the last word of one clause or sentence at the beginning of the next, through several clauses or sentences," reveals how the gradation component of gradatio works: "And not only so, but we glory in tribulations also: knowing that tribulation worketh patience; And patience, experience; and experience, hope: And hope maketh not ashamed; because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us" (Romans 5:3-5, and I've taken the liberty to use the KJV because the dense prose captures the figure better). The scheme at work here is a form of anadiplosis, which is the "repetition of the last word or phrase from the last clause at the start of the next clause," though anadiplosis does not necessarily always produce gradatio or climax.
It's a beautiful figure, but it's much more than that. Fahnestock notes how gradatio often allows an arguer to illustrate "conceptual passage from one of a series to the other. An arguer may, for example, present an audience with an apparent antithesis and then undo it with a connecting series. Because the gradatios elements are, in a sense, melded together, it is particularly effective for joining or blending, [...] [for it presents] a continuum where there were once divisions" (Rhetorical Figures in Science 98).
Fahnestock refers to such creative work as "conceptual virtuosity," a beautiful way of figuring the often brilliant way gradatio and other mediating figures like it "undo antitheses." Antithesis means contrasting words or ideas, often juxtaposed to create fixed opposites. The example from Romans above sets up the antithesis between states of "tribulation" and "not being ashamed," and then undoes the juxtaposition by gradation, providing a series of overlapping steps that resolve the tension between the terms.
Perhaps one of the most familiar uses of gradatio is the illustration from evolutionary theory. How do you get from the left to the right . . . by varying degrees of course.
Image graciously pilfered from GorillaHead.com
To be honest, I prefer this version, lifted from bitrebels.com
Gradatio is, as Fahnestock notes, a figure that invites virtuosic composition. Those who use it well use it to great effect, and for us as audience, we need to examine carefully the mediating terms placed in the middle to ensure there's no slippery work going on to falsely resolve the antithesis. A gradatio is always an argument, always an illustration of a theoretical path between two points, and the degree to which we agree the items in between share the appropriate characteristics is the degree to which we rest with the resolution of the antithesis. When you sense someone using a gradatio to move you to a conclusion that smells fishy, start by examining those mediating terms in the middle. That's where the slippery fish make their money, and you turn into a monkey.
I'm thinking of using gradatio to construct my own version of the Evolution of Man for my American friends, only the final sapiens will be an entire country of people holding semi-automatic rifles to use in self-defence against each other; but I don't think I'll have resolved an antithesis, only moved from one primal creature to another. (Yeah, yeah, I know: reductio ad absurdium depending on the figure of hyperbole. . . I know.)
