Aeneid Rhetorical Devices Flashcards
Alliteration
Repetition of initial consonant sounds
Anaphora
Repetition of a word or phrase at the beginning of successive clauses
Asyndeton
Lack of conjunctions between coordinate phrases, clauses or words
Polysyndeton
Deliberate use of many conjunctions
Aposiopesis
A form of ellipse by which a speaker comes to an abrupt halt, seemingly overcome by passion or modesty
Apostrophe
A sudden turn from the general audience to address a specific group or person or personified abstraction absent or present
Assonance
The repetition of similar vowels in the stressed syllables of successive words
Caesura
A pause between words occurring within a metrical foot; the effect at the principal caesuranin a line of verse (generally within the third foot, or in both the second and fourth, in the dactylic hexameter) is sometimes to emphasize the word immediately preceding or following
Chiasmus
ABBA
Ellipsis
Omission of one or more words necessary to the sense of a sentence but easily understood from the context; often a form of the verb sum or a speech verb.
Enjambment
Delay of the final word or phrase of a sentence or clause to the beginning of the following verse, to emphasize an idea or create suspense
Hendiadys
Use of two conjoined nouns instead of a noun and modifier
Hiatus
Lack of ellision where two syllables would ordinarily be elided, usually employed for emphasis at the end of a clause
Hyperbole
Exaggeration for emphasis or for rhetorical effect
Litotes
Understatement, for intensification, by denying the contrary of the thing being affirmed
Metonymy
Substituting the name of an attribute or feature for the name of the thing itself (as in ‘they counted heads’)
Onomatopoeia
Using words that imitate yhe sound they denote
Personification
Attribution of personality to an impersonal thing
Pleonasm
Using more worss than necessary
Praeteritio
Pretended omission for rhetorical effect
Prolepsis
The anticipation, in adjective or nouns, of the result of the action of a verb; also, the positioning of a relative clause before its antecedent
Synchysis
ABAB
Tmesis
The separation of a compound word into two parts
Zeugma
Two different words linked to a verb or an adjective which is strictly appropriate to only one of them
