We have finally arrived at the dreaded compound-complex sentence, the very name of which often strikes fear in the hearts of my students. It sounds so complicated! At least it did to me when I was their age. I had a hard time breaking the sentence down into its parts. There are three in all, consisting of two complete thoughts and one incomplete thought.

Complete Thought + Complete Thought + Incomplete Thought = Compound-Complex Sentence

Once my students memorize this formula, they simply need to put it together with the same rules for compound sentences and complex sentences. As the name implies, a compound-complex sentence builds from those earlier structures, so a good foundation in them is essential.

SAMPLE LESSON

Here is our first sample sentence.

(We’ll look at the merits of Petrarch’s philosophy shortly. For now, let’s focus on the sentence structure.)

When I guide my students through a sentence like this, I tell them to first look for any conjunctions, conjunctive adverbs, or subordinate conjunctions. For example, if we see a comma conjunction, then we know two complete thoughts are being combined. If we see a subordinate conjunction followed by a phrase that otherwise looks like a complete thought, then we have an incomplete thought.

In this example, we have the conjunction “but” set off with a comma. We also have the subordinate conjunction “because” followed by a complete thought. Right away, that should tell us we have two complete thoughts and one incomplete thought. That makes the sentence compound-complex!

To be more precise, the first complete thought is “Francis Petrarch considered the Middle Ages a period of darkness.” The second complete thought is “he considered himself enlightened.” The incomplete thought is “because he valued the principles of classical antiquity.”

Yes, there are a number of steps in identifying a compound-complex sentence, but they follow a predictable pattern. With practice, students come to recognize them quickly.

To diagram a compound-complex sentence, we start off with the two complete thoughts, stacking the first one on top and the second on the bottom. We connect them with our “step” from the top verb to the bottom verb and place the conjunction on the step.

Once we have done that, then we diagram the part of the incomplete thought that looks complete. That should be placed beneath the complete thought it modifies, which may mean it needs to be pushed far off to the side to fit below.

Finally, we connect it with a dotted diagonal line from verb to verb and write the subordinate conjunction on it.

PRACTICE SENTENCES

We’ll continue with Francis Petrarch (1304-1374) for our practice sentences and try to get to the bottom of why he considered his era, the Renaissance, so far superior to the preceding Middle Ages.

In fact, we have Petrarch to thank for all those comics with knights riding around in the pitch black. No, he did not actually draw them, but his philosophy gave birth to them. He called the Middle Ages the “Dark Ages,” and that term has stuck throughout the centuries. Only in modern times have historians begun to reconsider the merits of this term and all the negative connotations it implies.

Obviously, knights were not really riding around blindly in the dark, but more to the point, society as a whole was not simply devoid of culture and learning during the Middle Ages. There were ample great thinkers throughout the era, many of whom went on to become saints: Augustine, Bernard of Clairvaux, and Thomas Aquinas, to name a few.

What’s more, they were not wholly disconnected from the works of classical antiquity. Rather, they expanded and developed them in innovative ways, often drawing previously unseen connections to Christianity. One might even argue the Middle Ages gave birth to greater originality than the Renaissance where artists painstakingly copied the work of their classical icons as if they were a fixed formula or pattern.

The point is not so much to compare which era is better but to acknowledge the richness found in both. Petrarch may have been a genius of sorts, but that does not mean the generations of the preceding era were inferior, or worse yet, “backwards.” Rather, the differences between the Renaissance and the Middle Ages reflect a major shift in the worldview that prevailed throughout Western Civilization.

We’ll look at some of those differences in the next post.