If the text's periodic syntax was seen as something to be combated, even ‘naturalised’ by exposition, we might expect a similarly adversarial approach from glosses which treat other elements of the text's style. However, this is far from the case. When glossators come to look at figurative language, which is defined precisely by its departure from the norms of grammatical correctness, the text becomes a resource, an embodiment of the strategies of elocutio with which the student must be acquainted. This shift in attitude derives ultimately from grammatica's traditional claim to the figures and tropes, the foundations of elocutio, a claim which in turn derives from the ancient practice of textual enarratio that I sketched in the second chapter of this book. But, as we saw there, the claims of rhetoric are also pressing, and it will be the principle aim of this chapter to show how the practice of glossing the figures and tropes in the classical text forces us to reassess where and how we place the boundary between grammar and rhetoric in the twelfth century, and even whether, in reading practice, the notion of a boundary is sustainable.