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Recusatio Variation

Device
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

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The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

A poetic trope in which the speaker formally declines to address a conventional theme or adopt a traditional style, often ironically.

Detailed Definition
Recusatio variation is a poetic trope in which the speaker feigns inability or refusal to address a grand or traditional theme, often to subtly assert poetic authority or redirect focus; derived from Latin recusatio (“refusal”), it appears in Horace and later in Renaissance panegyric.
Example
Example in poetry:
Recusatio Variation declines to write epic, choosing humble themes: Horace’s Odes (“I shall not attempt the Theban war”); modern examples include W.H. Auden’s “In Memory of W.B. Yeats” (“poetry makes nothing happen”); Billy Collins’ “Introduction to Poetry” (“I ask them to take a poem / and hold it up to the light”); A.E. Stallings’ modest mythological retellings; Robert Herrick’s “Corinna’s Going A-Maying” rejects martial themes for pastoral joy.
Additional Notes
Recusatio Variation: A rhetorical move where the poet claims inability to write on a lofty theme, but does so indirectly; common in classical poetry.
Also Known As
Refusal variation Decline device Recusatio change Rejection technique
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