Climax (Gradation)

Climax is an arrangement of sentences (or of the homogeneous parts of sentences) which secures a gradual increase in significance, importance, or emotional tension in the utterance as in:

"It was a lovely city, a beautiful city, a fair city, a veritable gem of a city." (Byron)

Gradual increase in emotional evaluation is realized in this example by the distribution of the corresponding lexical items.

A gradual increase in significance may be maintained in three ways: logical, emotional and quantitative.

Logical climax is based on the relative importance of the component parts looked at from the point of view of the concept embodied in them. This relative importance may be evaluated both objectively and subjectively, the author's attitude towards the objects or phenomena in question being disclosed.

Emotional climax is based on the relative emotional tension produced by words with emotive meaning, as in the first example with the words "lovely", "beautiful", "fair". Emotional climax based on synonymous strings of words with emotive meaning will inevitably cause certain semantic differences in these words - such is the linguistic nature of stylistic synonyms - but emotive meaning will be the prevailing one.

Quantitative climax is an evident increase in the volume of the corresponding concepts as in: "They looked at hundreds of houses; they climbed thousands of stairs; they inspecetd innumerable kitchens." (Maugham)

Here the climax is achieved by simple numerical increase. Climax, like many other SDs is a means by which the author disclose his world outlook, his evaluation of objective facts and phenomena. The concrete stylistic function of this device is to show the relative importance of things as seen by the author, or to impress upon the reader the significance of the things described by suggested comparison, or to depict phenomena dynamically.

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