Simone Vannini eBooks

Public speaking: principles and practice. E-book. Formato EPUB Irvah Lester Winter   -  Simone Vannini, 2015  - 

This book is designed to set forth the main principles of effective platform delivery, and to provide a large body of material for student practice. The work laid out may be used to form a separate course of study, or a course of training running parallel with a course in debating or other original speaking. It has been prepared with a view also to that large number who want to speak, or have to speak, but cannot have the advantage of a teacher. Much is therefore said in the way of caution, and untechnical language is used throughout.The discussion of principles in Part One is intended as a help towards the student's understanding of his task, and also as a common basis of criticism in the relation between teacher and pupil. The preliminary fundamental work of Part Two, Technical Training, deals first with the right formation of tone, the development of voice as such, the securing of a fixed right vocal habit. Following comes the adapting of this improved voice to the varieties of use, or expressional effect, demanded of the public speaker. After this critical detailed drill, the student is to take the platform, and apply his acquired technique to continued discourse, receiving criticism after each entire piece of work.The question as to what should be the plan and the content of Part Three, Platform Practice, has been determined simply by asking what are the distinctly varied conditions under which men most frequently speak. It is regarded as profitable for the student to practice, at least to some extent, in all the several kinds of speech here chosen. In thus cultivating versatility, he will greatly enlarge his power of expression, and will, at length, discover wherein lies his own special capability.

On the sublime. E-book. Formato EPUB Longinus   -  Simone Vannini, 2015  - 

The word “style” has become a weariness to think upon; so much is said, so much is printed about the art of expression, about methods, tricks, and turns; so many people, without any long experience, set up to be judges of style, on the strength of having admired two or three modern and often rather fantastic writers. About our author, however, we know that his experience has been long, and of the best, that he does not speak from a hasty acquaintance with a few contemporary précieux and précieuses. The bad writing of his time he traces, as much of our own may be traced, to “the pursuit of novelty in thought,” or rather in expression. “It is this that has turned the brain of nearly all our learned world to-day.” “Gardons nous d’écrire trop bien,” he might have said, “c’est la pire manière qu’il y’ait d’écrire.”I.5The Sublime, with which he concerns himself, is “a certain loftiness and excellence of language,” which “takes the reader out of himself.... The Sublime, acting with an imperious and irresistible force, sways every reader whether he will or no.” In its own sphere the Sublime does what “natural magic” does in the poetical rendering of nature, and perhaps in the same scarcely-to-be-analysed fashion. Whether this art can be taught or not is a question which the author treats with modesty. Then, as now, people were denying (and not unjustly) that this art can be taught by rule. The author does not go so far as to say that Criticism, “unlike Justice, does little evil, and little good; that is, if to entertain for a moment delicate and curious minds is to do little good.” He does not rate his business so low as that. He admits that the inspiration comes from genius, from nature. But “an author can only learn from art when he is to abandon himself to the direction of his genius.”