Farnsworth's Classical English Rhetoric. Ward Farnsworth
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or phrase is used at the beginning and end of a sentence or set of them – e.g., “The King is dead. Long live the King!” (or, in the original French, Le Roi est mort. Vive le Roi!). The usual effect is a sense of circuitry; the second instance of the repeated word completes a thought about it.
Cassius from bondage will deliver Cassius.
Julius Caesar, 1, 3
Ambition must be made to counteract ambition.
Madison, Federalist 51
Shakspeare will never be made by the study of Shakspeare.
Emerson, Self-Reliance (1841)
The minority gives way not because it is convinced that it is wrong, but because it is convinced that it is a minority.
Stephen, Liberty, Equality, Fraternity (1873)
All buttoned-up men are weighty. All buttoned-up men are believed in. Whether or no the reserved and never-exercised power of unbuttoning, fascinates mankind; whether or no wisdom is supposed to condense and augment when buttoned up, and to evaporate when unbuttoned; it is certain that the man to whom importance is accorded is the buttoned-up man.
Dickens, Little Dorrit (1857)
A prominent case of epanalepsis occurs in Brutus’s speech at the funeral of Julius Caesar, where the device is used twice and then relaxed at the end – a useful idea (a pattern, then relief from it) considered more closely in later chapters.
Romans, countrymen, and lovers! hear me for
my cause, and be silent, that you may hear:
believe me for mine honour, and have respect to
mine honour, that you may believe: censure me
in your wisdom, and awake your senses, that you
may the better judge.
Julius Caesar, 3, 2
6. Special effects.
a. Repetition to suggest motion, action, or sound.
But, sir, from the light in which he appears to hold the wavering conduct of up, up, up – and down, down, down – and round, round, round, – we are led to suppose, that his real sentiments are not subject to vary, but have been uniform throughout.
Livingston, speech at New York Ratifying Convention (1788)
A good surgeon is worth a thousand of you. I have been in surgeons’ hands often, and have always found reason to depend upon their skill; but your art, Sir, what is it? – but to daub, daub, daub; load, load, load; plaster, plaster, plaster; till ye utterly destroy the appetite first, and the constitution afterwards, which you are called in to help.
Richardson, Clarissa (1748)
My head is playing all the tunes in the world, ringing such peals! It has just finished the “Merry Christ Church Bells,” and absolutely is beginning “Turn again, Whittington.” Buz, buz, buz; bum, bum, bum; wheeze, wheeze, wheeze; fen, fen, fen; tinky, tinky, tinky; cr’annch.
Lamb, letter to Coleridge (1800)
b. Demands and exhortations.
[T]urn ye, turn ye from your evil ways; for why
will ye die, O house of Israel?
Ezekiel 33:11
Work on,
My medicine, work!
Othello, 4, 1
“Lead on!” said Scrooge. “Lead on! The night is waning fast, and it is precious time to me, I know. Lead on, Spirit!”
Dickens, A Christmas Carol (1843)
Stop snoring, ye sleepers, and pull. Pull, will ye? pull, can’t ye? pull, won’t ye? Why in the name of gudgeons and ginger-cakes don’t ye pull? – pull and break something! pull, and start your eyes out!
Melville, Moby-Dick (1851)
c. To indicate identity or duplication.
And being seated, and domestic broils
Clean over-blown, themselves the conquerors
Make war upon themselves; brother to brother,
Blood to blood, self against self.
Richard III, 2, 4
Blood hath bought blood, and blows have
answer’d blows;
Strength match’d with strength, and power
confronted power;
Both are alike, and both alike we like.
King John, 2, 1
[T]he contest between the rich and the poor is not a struggle between corporation and corporation, but a contest between men and men, – a competition, not between districts, but between descriptions.
Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France (1791)
7. Mixed themes. Repetition itself can serve as a motif, with different uses of it combined in a short space to create a sort of reverberation. The second and different round of repetition reminds the ear of the first.
Ingenious men may assign ingenious reasons for opposite constructions of the same clause. They may heap refinement upon refinement, and subtlety upon subtlety, until they construe away every republican principle, every right sacred and dear to man.
Williams, speech at New York Ratifying Convention (1788)
For in tremendous extremities human souls are like drowning men; well enough they know they are in peril; well enough they know the causes of that peril; – nevertheless, the sea is the sea, and these drowning men do drown.
Melville, Pierre (1852)
2. Repetition at the Start: ANAPHORA
ANAPHORA (a-na-pho-ra) occurs when the speaker repeats the same words at the start of successive sentences or clauses. This figure is a staple of high style, and so carries with it some risk of cliché; it gives an utterance the strong ring of oratory. Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech is known by that name because those words are repeated at the start of eight sentences in a row: a famous modern instance of anaphora.
Anaphora generally serves two principal purposes. Returning to the same words creates a hammering effect; the repeated language is certain to be noticed, likely to be remembered, and readily conveys strong feeling. Starting sentences with the same words also creates an involving rhythm. The rhythm may be good in itself, and it causes the ear to expect the pattern to continue. That expectation can then be satisfied or disrupted in various useful ways.
1. Repetition of the subject with changes in the verb. Anaphora is helpful for describing different things all done, or to be done, by the same subject. Often it also involves repetition of an auxiliary verb while the main verb changes; when used with the active voice in the first person, such constructions can produce a sense of inexorability:
The enemy said, I will pursue, I will overtake, I will divide the spoil; my lust shall be satisfied upon them; I will draw my sword, my hand shall destroy them.
Exodus 15:9
But be the ordeal sharp or long, or both, we shall seek no terms, we shall tolerate no parley; we may show mercy – we shall ask for none.
Churchill, London radio broadcast (1940)
Churchill’s anaphora of future action – we shall, we shall, we shall – creates a sense of resolution that underscores the substance of what he is saying.
The same construction can be used passively, to describe a series of things all done to the same person:
I say to you that if you rear yourself against it, you shall fall, you shall be bruised, you shall be battered,