Sound Repetition and Variation
ANTIMETABOLIC SEQUENCE: repetition of sounds in inverse order.
"if like a crab you could go backward" (HAM 2.2.203-04).
ALLITERATION: repetition of initial sounds.
"as long as he liveth he shall be lent to the Lord"
(1 Sam 1:28).
ASSONANCE: repetition of vowel sounds.
"Arise, shine, for thy light is come" (Isa 60:1).
CONSONANCE: repetition of consonant sounds.
"O Lord my God, in thee do I put my trust" (Psa 7:1).
FULL RIME: exact repetition of final vowel + consonant sounds in words at the end of successive phrases or clauses.
"All we like sheep have gone astray;
we have turned every one to his own way" (Isa 53:6).
HOMOETELEUTON or NEAR RIME: repetition of final consonant sounds.
"Ask, and it shall be given unto you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you" (Matt 7:7).
"Water, is taught by thirst,
Land--by the Oceans passed." (ED P135)
INTERNAL RIME: repetition of final sounds in words within a phrase or clause.
"they heart is not right in the sight of God" (Acts 8:21).
PAROMOEON: repetition of initial and final sounds.
"let not those that seek thee be confounded for my sake, O God of Israel" (Psa 69:6).
SONANCE: rich combination of various sound figures.
"The bows of the mighty men are broken, and they that stumbled are girded with strength" (1 Sam 2:4). Repetition of Words and Phrases
ANADIPLOSIS: the final word(s) of one phrase or clause are the initial word(s) of the next.
"And when the people complained, it displeased the Lord: and the Lord heard it" (Num 11:1).
ANAPHORA: repetition of initial words.
"Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up" (1 Cor 13:4).
ANTIMETABOLE: words repeated in inverse order.
"the children ought not to lay up for the parents, but the parents for the children" (2 Cor 12:14).
CLIMAX: a series of phrases or clause linked by repetition of final and initial words (see ANADIPLOSIS).
"add to your faith virtue; and to virtue knowledge; And to knowledge temperance; and to temperance patience; and to patience godliness; And to godliness brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness charity" (2 Pet 1:5-7).
EPANADIPLOSIS: repetition of the same initial and final word(s) in a phrase or clause.
"Rejoice with them that do rejoice, and weep with them that weep" (Rom 12:15).
EPANALEPSIS: general or irregular repetition of words.
"A wicked and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; and there shall be no sign given unto it, but the sign of the prophet Jonas" (Matt 16:4).
EPISTROPHE: repetition of final words.
"And one kid of the goats for a sin offering; beside the continual burnt offering, his meat offering, and his drink offering" (Num 29:16).
EPIZEUXIS: immediate repetition of adjacent words.
"My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" (Matt 27:46).
POLYPTOTON: repetition of words with the same root.
"But let him ask in faith, nothing wavering. For he that wavereth is like a wave of the sea driven with the wind and tossed" (James 1:6).
SYMPLOCE: repetition of the same initial and final words in successive phrases or clauses.
"When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child" (1 Cor 13:11). Syntax Figures
ANACOLUTHON: a digression of syntactic structure so that a sentence begins with a clause that is never resolved and ends with a different clause (see Hamlet 5.1.172-75).
For if the sun breed maggots in a dead dog, being a god kissing carrion -- Have you a daughter? (Hamlet 2.02.182)
ASYNDETON: deletion of conjunctions between words in a series.
"And his name shall be called, Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace" (Isa 9:6).
ELLIPSIS: omission of part of a phrase or clause structure.
"We'll put on those shall praise your excellence" (Hamlet 4.07.131.
HYPERBATON: unusual inversion of standard word order (see Hamlet 1.02.1-16).
INVERSION: variation on standard word order as a poetic convention.
"great shall be the peace of thy children" (Isa 54:13).
ISOCOLON: successive phrases or clauses with the same number of syllables.
"She shall give to thine head an ornament of grace:
a crown of glory shall she deliver to thee" (Pro 4:9)
PAIRS: sets of two synonymous or complementary or antithetical words.
"thy rod and thy staff they comfort me" (Psa 23:4)
PARENTHESIS: a phrase or clause that interrupts an idea.
"All that remained for the moment was to decide where I would go to graduate school and that question was settled -- the "snobs" were right -- by a Kellett Fellowship and then a Fulbright Scholarship to boot" (Norman Podhoretz).
PARISON: phrases or clauses with the same structure.
"whither thou goest, I will go;
and where thou lodgest, I will lodge" (Ruth 1:16).
POLYSYNDETON: words or phrases joined by conjunctions in a series.
"O the vainness, and the frailties, and the foolishness of men!" (2 Ne 9:28)
TETRADS: sets of four words.
"that perhaps ye may be found spotless, pure, fair, and white, having been cleansed by the blood of the Lamb" (Mormon 9:6).
TRIADS: sets of three words.
"a maid so tender, fair and happy" (OTH 1.02.66) Lexis Figures
ANTITHESIS: words or phrases that contrast in meaning.
"for the letter killeth,
but the Spirit giveth life" (2 Cor 3:6).
AUXESIS: a series of words or ideas that increase (or decrease) in length or degree within a passage.
"All landscapes lie under a veiling sky. Each one embraces ten views, each view a hundred sights, each sight a thousand shapes, each separate shape a million discriminations made from inward darkness by instrument, and every single one some apprehension of infinitude" (Arthur H. King).
CHIASMUS: similar words or phrases in inverse order.
"For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways" (Isa 55:8).
HENDIADYS: an idea expressed by two nouns connected by and instead of being expressed by a noun and a qualifier; any expression in which coordinate words are used when one word would have been subordinate to the other.
"the blood and baseness of our natures would/ conduct us to most prepost'rous conclusions" (Othello 1.03.328).
NEOLOGISM: a new word "coined" into the language or borrowed from another language.
"in the verity of extolement" (Hamlet 4.02.116).
OXYMORON: the juxtaposition of paradoxical or contradicting ideas.
"he that is greatest among you shall be your servant" (Matt 23:11).
PARALLELISM: phrases or clauses with similar meanings.
"Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me" (Psa 51:10).
PERIPHRASIS: circumlocution; a long or roundabout way of expressing the meaning of a word or a short phrase.
"he was lifted up upon the cross and slain for the sins of the world" (1 Ne 11:33).
PLEONASM: redundancy; repetition of synonymous words or phrases.
"ye may be found spotless, pure, fair, white, having been cleansed by the blood of the Lamb" (Morm 9:6).
PUN: word-play created by two words that sound the same but have different meanings.
"Sing, O barren, thou that didst not bear" (Isa 54:1).
SENSE PLAY: word-play created by using two different senses of one word.
"Ask for / me tomorrow, and you shall find me a grave man" (Romeo and Juliet 3.01.97-98).
SORIASMUS: combination of words derived from different languages.
"Sanctify yourselves therefore, and be ye holy" (Lev 20:7). Style
BINDERS: rhetorical figures which give cohesion to units of text or discourse by the repetition and variation of linguistic elements.
BREVIA: succinctness; a terse style with concise expressions.
"Jesus wept" (John 11:35).
COPIA: wordiness; verbosity; a profuse style, with lengthy expressions, using pleonasm, periphrasis, and so forth.
PLAIN STYLE: the tongue of angels; a humble, pure, and sincere style, patterned after the words of Christ, using the music of language to endorse the truth in love and life. (See 1 Cor 13).
REGISTER: levels of formality in speech and writing, such as frozen, high, normal, low, colloquial, and so forth.
"Hey, Dude!"
"What's up?"
"How are ya?"
"How are you?"
"How do you do?"
RHETORICAL FOCUS: the person who influences the variation of register in a scene or circumstance.
SENECANISM: a highly rhetorical style patterned after Seneca the younger, characterized by exaggerated horrors, sensational themes, unnatural crimes, revenge, hyperbole, detailed descriptions, narrative reports, soriasmus, gory diction, apostrophe, and interjections. (See Macbeth 2.01.36-39).
ARCADIANISM: a copious style patterned after that of Sidney's Arcadia, using sound repetition, word repetition, episodic sentence structure, and pathetic fallacy. (See Polonius in Hamlet).
EPISODIC SENTENCE: a long sentence using coordinate (paratactic) structure rather than subordinate (hypertactic) structure, though the structures are not necessarily parisonic (grammatically parallel). (See Comedy of Errors 4.03.1-6).
CICERONISM: a copious style patterned after that of Cicero, using sound repetition (e.g. homeoteleuton), word repetition, periodic sentence structure, and rhetorical devices of argument. (See Claudius in Hamlet).
PERIODIC SENTENCE: a sentence which begins with a series of dependent (subordinate) clauses and ends with the main clause or main verb; a sentence in which the main clause is postponed to the end. (See A Winter's Tale 4.04.79-83).
EUPHUISM: a style patterned after that of John Lily's Euphues, using balanced construction, antithesis, isocolon, parison, rhetorical questions, similes, illustrations, and so forth. (See Brutus in Julius Caesar).
PARISONIC SENTENCE: a sentence whose structure is syntactically and grammatically parallel to adjacent sentences. (See 2 Henry IV 1.02.180-84).
PLAIN STYLE: the tongue of angels; a humble, pure, and sincere style, patterned after the words of Christ, using the music of language to endorse the truth in love and life. (See 1 Cor 13).
Hamlet 1.01.158-64
MARCELLUS: It faded on the crowing of the cock.
Some say that ever 'gainst that season comes
Wherein our Savior's birth is celebrated,
This bird of dawning singeth all night long,
And then they say no spirit dare stir abroad,
The nights are wholesome, then no planets strike,
No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm,
So hallowed, and so gracious, is that time.
Hamlet 2.01.1-16
CLAUDIUS: Though yet of Hamlet our dear brother's death
The memory be green, and that it us befitted
To bear our hearts in grief, and our whole kingdom
To be contracted in one brow of woe,
Yet so far hath discretion fought with nature
That we with wisest sorrow think on him
Together with remembrance of ourselves.
Therefore our sometime sister, now our queen,
Th' imperial jointress to this warlike state,
Have we, as 'twere with a defeated joy,
With mirth in funeral, and with dirge in marriage,
In equal scale weighing delight and dole,
Taken to wife; nor have we herein barr'd
Your better wisdoms, which have freely gone
With this affair along.
Gertrude's description of Ophelia's drowning:
There on the pendant boughs her crownet weeds
Clamb'ring to hang, an envious sliver broke,
When down her weedy trophies and herself
Fell in the weeping brook. Her clothes spread wide . . .
(Hamlet 5.1.172-75)
Semantically, the branch breaks at the end of the second line in the middle of the passage. Syntactically, the passage breaks in the middle because of the anacoluthonic switch of subjects from clause to clause with the sentence. Furthermore, the sound patterns of the first two lines are repeated in inverse mimic-like fashion in the last two lines, heightening the reflected image of Ophelia climbing up onto the branch and dropping down. For example, the /w/i:/d/ and /br/o:/k/ sounds in weeds and broke have line-binding echoes in weedy trophies and weeping brook. Using these language details as a base, I can begin to evaluate the tone of Gertrude's narrative. The density of figures does not necessarily imply eloquence on the part of Gertrude, rather her affected linguistic fascination may seem a little disconcerting in light of Ophelia's suffering.
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