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Aporia, metonymy, antimetabole, epistrophe. Another group of literary devices we might use and not know we are doing so. See last week’s post for four more.
Aporia –Rhetorical device in which a speaker expresses uncertainty or doubt—often pretended uncertainty or doubt—about something, usually as a way of proving a point. Examples from literature:
From Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart”: True!—nervous—very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad? The disease had sharpened my senses—not destroyed—not dulled them. Above all was the sense of hearing acute. I heard all things in the heaven and in the earth. I heard many things in hell. How, then, am I mad?
From Frost’s “The Road Not Taken
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—I took the one less traveled by,And that has made all the difference.
From Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet: What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.
From Bob Dylan’s “Blowing in the Wind”: How many roads must a man walk down before you call him a man?
Metonymy – Figure of speech in which a word is replaced with another word closely associated with the original concept, such as “love” with “heart.” Similar to synecdoche, which uses a part to represent the whole or vice versa.
They had a Monet hanging on the wall (painting).
Italian is my mother tongue (language).
Wall Street is doing well today (the stock market).
Antimetabole –Figure of speech in which a phrase is repeated, but with the order of words reversed.
Kennedy’s “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.”
When the going gets tough, the tough get going.
Stephen Stills’ “If you can’t be with the one you love, love the one you’re with.”
Dumas’s “All for one, and one for all.”
Epistrophe – Repetition of a word or expression at the end of successive phrases, clauses, sentences, or verses.
I swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
Lincoln’s “government of the people, by the people, for the people”
Dylan’s “Just Like a Woman”
She takes just like a woman, yesShe makes love just like a woman, yes, she doesAnd she aches just like a womanBut she breaks just like a little girl
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