Ballads in the black tradition are also often centonical—they borrow thematic elements from a variety of sources to build something new.

One writer gravely assures us that Maurice of Saxony learned all his fraudulent policy from that execrable volume [The Prince].

They fulminated the most hostile of all decrees.

[E]ntelechy, or the entelechial motive, is a function of language and is rooted in history, in a verbal action by a human agent in a specific sociopolitical scene. The entelechial motive is one of the most purely human motives in Burke.