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FIGURES OF SPEECH
allegory A narrative in which abstract ideas figure as circumstances or persons,
usually to enforce a moral truth Latin: Fama in Aeneid 4.173-‐197 English: Animal Farm by George Orwell is probably the most famous modern allegory. The animals on the farm overthrow the humans and take over running the place. This represents events leading up to the Stalin-‐era in Russia. So the farm politics represent real politics.
alliteration Repetition of the same sound, usually initial, in two or more words. This
term normally applies to consonants and accented initial vowel Latin: magno cum murmure montis, Aeneid 1.55 English: “Touch each object you want to touch as if tomorrow your tactile sense would fail.” -‐Helen Keller
anaphora Repetition of a word, usually at the beginning of successive clauses or
phrases, for emphasis or for pathetic effect. This figure is often accompanied by asyndeton and ellipsis Latin: hic illius arma, hic currus fuit; hoc regnum…, Aeneid 1.16-‐17; ubi...ubi...ubi, Aeneid 1.99-‐100 English: “We shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills. We shall never surrender.” -‐Winston Churchill, speech before the House of Commons (June 4, 1940)
anastrophe An inversion of the usual order of words, usually preposition and object
Latin: Italiam contra, Aeneid 1.13 English: I’m going to finish mowing the lawn. What with? The lawnmower is out of gas.
aposiopesis An abrupt failure to complete a sentence, for rhetorical effect
Latin: Quos ego—, Aeneid 1.135 English: If you do that one more time, I’ll…; Why, I oughta…
apostrophe Address of an absent person or an abstraction, usually for pathetic effect
Latin: o terque quaterque beati, Aeneid 1.94 English: “O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done.” -‐Walt Whitman
assonance The close recurrence of similar sounds, usually used of vowel sounds
Latin: amissos longo socios sermone requirunt, Aeneid 1.217 English: “And so, all the night-‐tide, I lie down by the side / Of my darling, my darling, my life and my bride.” -‐Edgar Allan Poe, “Annabel Lee”
asyndeton Omission of conjunctions in a closely related series (see anaphora). Latin: Veni, vidi, vici (quoted in Plutarch’s Life of Caesar)
English: “…and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.” -‐Abraham Lincoln, Gettysburg Address
chiasmus Arrangement of pairs of words in opposite order, for example, (adj. chiastic) noun A, adjective B, adjective B, noun A. This figure often emphasizes a
contrast Latin: navem in conspectu nullam, tres litore cervos prospicit, Aeneid 1.184-‐85 English: Quitters never win and winners never quit.
ecphrasis An apparent digression describing a place (est locus...), connected at the
end of the description to the main narrative by hic or huc. This device is used in epic for a transition to a new scene and provides a detailed/vivid description of a place or work of art. Latin: Aeneid 1.159-‐70 describes what Aeneas sees engraved on the doors of Carthage’s temple of Juno English: “About suffering they were never wrong, / The Old Masters: how well they understood / Its human position; how it takes place / While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along…In Brueghel’s Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away / Quite leisurely from the disaster; the plowman may / Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry, / But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone / As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green / Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen / Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky, / Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.” -‐ W. H. Auden, “Musée des Beaux Arts”
ellipsis Omission of one or more words necessary to the sense
Latin: Haec secum (dixit), Aeneid 1.37). English: Where are you going? To the store.
enjambment The running over of a sentence from one verse or couplet into another so
that closely related words fall in different lines (ac veluti magno in populo cum saepe coorta est seditio, Aeneid 1.148-‐49). English: “I think that I shall never see / A poem as lovely as a tree.” -‐Joyce Kilmer, Trees
hendiadys Use of two nouns connected by a conjunction with the meaning of one
modified noun Latin: molem et montes, Aeneid 1.61 English: There were joy and celebrations when the baby was born.
hyperbaton A figure of syntactic dislocation where phrase or words that belong together
are separated. (Greek for “stepping over”) Latin: dux et Troianus, Aeneid 1.124, 165 English: “Always two there are, no more, no less: a master and an apprentice.” -‐Yoda, Phantom Menace
hyperbole Exaggeration for effect
Latin: terram inter fluctus aperit, Aeneid 1.107 English: That bag weighs a ton.
hysteron proteron Reversal of chronological order in order to put the more important idea first
(moriamur et in media arma ruamus, Aeneid 2.353). English: “I want to hold you till I die, till we both break down and cry.” -‐Dan Hill, “Sometimes When We Touch”
interlocked order (synchysis) Arrangement of pairs of words so that one word of each pair is
between the words of the other (A,B,A,B). This arrangement normally emphasizes the close association of the pairs Latin: saevae memorem Iunonis ob iram, Aeneid 1.4 English: “Clowns to the left of me, jokers to my right” -‐Stealers Wheel, “Stuck in the Middle With You”
irony The use, clearly intentional or apparently unintentional (dramatic irony), of
words with a meaning contrary to the situation. In other words, a contrast between the apparent, stated situation and the actual reality Latin: Iunone secunda, Aeneid 4.45, unintentional; scilicet is superis labor est, Aeneid 4.379, intentional Dramatic Irony: In Oedipus Rex, the audience becomes increasingly aware that Oedipus is rushing blindly to his doom, but still Oedipus insists on pursuing his investigation into the death of King Laius (Oedipus pursues this quest in the hope that justice will be served, but eventually realizes that it was he himself who killed the old man)
English: Some find it ironic that Jesse Jackson counseled President Clinton on the issue of marital infidelity. (N.B., Nothing that Alanis Morisette says in that song is ironic, so it is ironic that “Ironic” is not ironic.)
litotes An understatement for emphasis, usually an assertion of something by
denying the opposite Latin: neque enim ignari sumus, Aeneid 1.198 English: “It’s not unusual to be loved by anyone.” -‐Tom Jones
metaphor An implied comparison, that is, the use of a word or words suggesting a
likeness between what is actually being described and something else. Latin: remigo alarum, Aeneid 1.301 English: “All the world’s a stage and men and women merely players” -‐Shakespeare, As You Like It
metonymy Use of one noun in place of another closely related noun to avoid common
or prosaic words. Latin: Cererem corruptam undis, Aeneid 1.177 English: The White House announced today that unemployment rates in the first quarter were higher than expected.
onomatopoeia (adj., onomatopoeic or onomatopoetic) Use of words whose sound suggests
the sense Latin: magno cum murmure montis, Aeneid 1.55 English: “After a time he began to wander about, going lippity-‐lippity—not very fast, and looking all around.” -‐Beatrix Potter, The Tale of Peter Rabbit
oxymoron The use of apparently contradictory in the same phrase (paradox). This
figure is particularly Horatian. Here is much to do with hate, but more with love. Latin: insaniens sapientia, Horace, Odes 1.34.2 English: “Why then, O bawling love! O bawling hate! / O anything! Of nothing first create! / O heavy lightness! Serious vanity! / Mis-‐shapen chaos and well seeming forms.” -‐Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet
personification Treatment of inanimate objects as human
Latin: suadentque cadentia sidera somnos, Aeneid 2.9 English: “The wind stood up and gave a shout. He whistled on his two fingers.” -James Stephens, “The Wind”
pleonasm (adj., pleonastic) Use of unnecessary words
Latin: mortales visus...reliquit et procul in tenuem ex oculis evanuit auram, Aeneid 4.277-‐78) English: I saw it with my very own eyes.
polysyndeton Use of unnecessary conjunctions
Latin: Eurusque Notusque ruunt creberque...Africus, Aeneid 1.85-‐86 English: “I said, ‘Who killed him?’ and he said, ‘I don’t know who killed him but he'’ dead all right,’ and it was dark and there was water standing in the street and no lights and windows broke and boats all up in the town and trees blown down and everything all blown and I got a skiff and went out and found my boat where I had her inside Mango Key and she was all right only she was full of water.” -‐Ernest Hemingway, “After the Storm”
polyptoton one word is repeated in different grammatical or syntactical (inflected)
forms. A special case of polyptoton is the figura etymologica which repeats two or more words of the same stem. (litora litoribus contraria, fluctibus undas inprecor, arma armis, pugnent ipsique nepotesque, Aeneid 4.628)
English: “There hath he lain for ages, and will lie.” Tennyson, The Kraken; “[…] love is not love / Which alters when it alteration finds, / Or bends with the remover to remove.” Shakespeare, Sonnet 116 (figura etymologica)
praeteritio Claiming to not mention or “pass over” something that one plans to say. Greek: “That part of our history which tells of the military achievements
which gave us our several possessions, or of the ready valour with which either we or our fathers stemmed the tide of Hellenic or foreign aggression, is a theme too familiar to my hearers for me to dilate on, and I shall therefore pass it by.” (Pericles’ Funeral Oration in Thucydides’ Histories 2.36) Latin: “What? when lately by the death of your former wife you had made your house empty and ready for a new bridal, did you not even add another incredible wickedness to this wickedness? But I pass that over (quod ego praetermitto), and willingly allow it to be buried in silence, that so horrible a crime may not be seen to have existed in this city, and not to have been chastised.” -‐Cicero, First Catilinarian Oration, 1.14 English: Not to mention your salary, but I do think you can afford this.
prolepsis (adj., proleptic) Use of a word before it is appropriate in the context. A proleptic
adjective does not apply to its noun until after the action of the verb, and is often best translated with a clause or phrase to bring out the emphasis on the adjective Latin: Submersasque obrue puppes, “so that they sink,” Aeneid 1.68 English: The following lines proleptically anticipate the assassination of a living character: “So the two brothers and their murdered man / Rode past fair Florence.” -‐John Keats, “Isabella”
prosopopeia The assumption of another’s persona for rhetorical or dramatic effect
Latin: Aeneas narrates his long trials to the court of Dido in Carthage. Inside this narrative are the embedded narratives of ghosts, spirits, and monsters, Aeneid 3 English: In the “Cooper Union Address,” Abraham Lincoln creates a mock debate between Republicans and the South, a debate in which he becomes spokesman for the party.
rhetorical question A question posed for its rhetorical effect and not requiring a reply or
intended to induce a reply Latin: et quisquam numen Iunonis adorat/ praeterea aut supplex aris imponet honorem? Aeneid 1.48-‐49 English: “Hath not a Jew eyes? hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions?...If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?” -‐Shakespeare, Merchant of Venice
simile An expressed comparison, introduced by a word such as similis, qualis, or
velut(i). Epic similes tend to be long, to relate to nature, and to digress from the point(s) of comparison (compare Aeneid 1.430-‐36). Latin: velut agmine facto, Aeneid 1.82 English: The late afternoon sky bloomed in the window for a moment like the blue honey of the Mediterranean.” -‐F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
synecdoche Use of the part for the whole to avoid common words or to focus attention
on a particular part. Latin: puppes for naves, Aeneid 1.68 English: I need a ride. Do you have wheels? John, get your butt out of that chair and get to work. (N.B., The relationship between metonymy and synecdoche is as follows: All synecdoche is metonymy, but not all metonymy is synecdoche.)
tmesis Separation of the parts of a compound word, usually for metrical
convenience Latin: circum dea fudit, Aeneid 1.412 English: “A-‐whole-‐nother,” in which another (an+other) is reanalyzed as a+nother; “Fan-‐bloody-‐tastic;” or “Ri-‐gosh-‐darn-‐diculous.”
transferred epithet A device of emphasis in which the poet attributes some characteristic of a
thing to another thing closely associated with it Latin: templumque vetustum desertae Cereris, Aeneid 2.713-‐14 English: On cold mornings there’s nothing like a hot cup of coffee.
tricolon crescens A three part increase of emphasis or enlargement of meaning (auxiliumque
viae veteres tellure recludit/ thesauros, ignotum argenti pondus et auri, Aeneid 1.358-‐359). English: Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave / Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind; / Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave. / I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.” -‐Edna St. Vincent Millay, Dirge without Music
zeugma Use of a verb or adjective with two words, to only one of which it literally
applies Latin: crudeles aras traiectaque pectora ferro nudavit, Aeneid 1.355-‐56). English: I can spend hours and my paycheck at the bookstore.