The Monastic Rules of Visigothic Iberia - eTheses Repository ...

than formal prose. 283 This might either be because of the inability of the author to write in a
learned high style, or through an active choice to do so for consideration of the abilities or
preferences of the intended audience. Elements of this oral style include the frequent use of
verbal and lexical repetition, as well as repetition of content; reducing or short colas, or, as
Lindholm (1931: 52) puts it, „rhetorical decrease‟; synonymy; lexical redundancy in the form
of, for example, nemo homo; the frequent employment of grammatical structures such as the
imperative; and the use of personal phrases such as ut supra dixi. 284
There must, of course, exist a distinction between oral literature and oral style, since
the two are very different concepts. Oral literature does not concern the current study;
monastic rules were written documents, sometimes read aloud and sometimes read
personally. Oral literature, however, implies an unwritten tradition, often with an element of
theatrical performance. This aspect has also been termed „word-power‟ by some recent
scholars, “a convenient abbreviated way of referring to sententious, rhythmically charged
language that is uttered in a heightened register” (Niles (1999: 29). See also Foley (1992)
and Lord (2002)).
Two features in particular of Catonian prose stand out. First, there is the issue of
parataxis, or breuitas as it may sometimes also be called, meaning the employment of an
economy of language, devoid of ornamentation and with short, stand-alone sentences. This
style is indicative of didactic or admonitory texts, and one is reminded of the prohibitive lists
283 For a discussion on some of the wider traits of an oral style, and its relationship with the spoken
language, see Koch (1995).
284 For a full review, see Till (1968: 33-38).
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