Farnsworth's Classical English Rhetoric. Ward Farnsworth

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СКАЧАТЬ 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, you shall be flawed, you shall be smashed.

      Dickens, Bleak House (1853)

      The anaphora gives the language a battering quality that again matches the underlying meaning.

      Anaphora of this kind also can create a comprehensive sound, as when the speaker wishes to create a sense that all possibilities are covered (or all things but one):

      But madmen never meet. It is the only thing they cannot do. They can talk, they can inspire, they can fight, they can found religions; but they cannot meet.

      Chesterton, A Miscellany of Men (1912)

      He’s too delightful. If he’ll only not spoil it! But they always will; they always do; they always have.

      James, The Ambassadors (1903)

      They always do, by itself, captures about the same literal meaning as the longer enumeration of past, present, and future; but the anaphora gives the result an exhaustive feel to go with the exhaustive substance.

      2. Repetition of the subject with different complements, as when applying several modifiers to the same person or thing. Repeating the subject and verb gives each claim its own emphasis:

      Every man sees that he is that middle point whereof every thing may be affirmed and denied with equal reason. He is old, he is young, he is very wise, he is altogether ignorant.

      Emerson, Spiritual Laws (1841)

      The anaphora enables Emerson to independently affirm each statement and set it vividly against its contrary. The parallel nature of the claims is strengthened both by the repetition at the start (he is . . . he is) and by the omission of any conjunction at the end – a use of asyndeton, which has its own chapter later.

      Here is a fine case of the same construction turned to the purpose of negation:

      I certainly should dread more from a wild-cat in my bedchamber than from all the lions that roar in the deserts behind Algiers. But in this parallel it is the cat that is at a distance, and the lions and tigers that are in our antechambers and our lobbies. Algiers is not near; Algiers is not powerful; Algiers is not our neighbor; Algiers is not infectious.

      Burke, Letter on the Proposals for Peace with the Regicide Directory of France (1796)

      Anaphora also can heighten the contrast between affirmative and negative constructions when they are mixed:

      Why is it that the jolly old barbarians of this earth are always championed by people who are their antithesis? Why is it? You are sagacious, you are benevolent, you are well informed, but, Chadd, you are not savage.

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