epanalepsis

Definition:

(1) A rhetorical term for the repetition of a word or phrase at regular intervals: a refrain. Adjective: epanaleptic.

(2) Repetition at the end of a clause or sentence of the word or phrase with which it began: a combination of anaphora and epistrophe.

See also:

• Diacope
• Tool Kit for Rhetorical Analysis
• Would You Repeat That, Please?

Etymology:

From the Greek, "resumption, repetition

Examples and Observations:

• "Next time there won't be a next time."
  (Phil Leotardo in The Sopranos)



• "Rejoice in the Lord always: and again I say, Rejoice."
  (The Bible, Phil. 4.4)



• "He is noticeable for nothing in the world except for the markedness by which he is noticeable for nothing.”
  (Edgar Allan Poe, "The Literati of New York City." Godey's Lady's Book, Sep. 1846)



• "Say over again, and yet once over again,
  That thou dost love me . . .."
  (Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Sonnets from the Portuguese)



• "Possessing what we still were unpossessed by,
  Possessed by what we now no more possessed."
  (Robert Frost, "The Gift Outright")



• "The man who did the waking buys the man who was sleeping a drink; the man who was sleeping drinks it while listening to a proposition from the man who did the waking."
  (Jack Sparrow, The Pirates of the Caribbean)



• "We know nothing of one another, nothing. Smiley mused. However closely we live together, at whatever time of day or night we sound the deepest thoughts in one another, we know nothing."
  (John le Carré, Call for the Dead, 1961)



• Epanalepsis in Julius Caesar
  "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."
  (Brutus in Act III, scene two of Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare)
  By repeating "hear" and "believe" at both the beginning and end of successive lines, Brutus emphasizes to the crowd that these are the two main things he desires: for the crowd to "hear" him and, more significantly, to "believe" what he is about to say regarding the assassination of Julius Caesar.



• Epanalepsis in James Joyce's Ulysses
  "Don John Conmee walked and moved in times of yore. He was humane and honoured there. He bore in mind secrets confessed and he smiled at smiling noble faces in a beeswaxed drawingroom, ceiled with full fruit clusters. And the hands of a bride and bridegroom, noble to noble, were impalmed by Don John Conmee."
  (James Joyce's, Chapter 10 of Ulysses, 1922)



• "Epanalepsis is rare in prose, probably because when the emotional situation arises that can make such a scheme appropriate, poetry seems to be the only form that can adequately express the emotion."
  (Edward P.J. Corbett and Robert J. Connors, Classical Rhetoric for the Modern Student. Oxford Univ. Press, 1999)



• "When epanalepsis is used in prose, it often creates sentences that stand alone as aphorisms: 'Nothing can be created out of nothing' (Lucretius). 'Men of few words are the best men' (Henry IV 3.2)."
  (Arthur Quinn and Lyon Rathbun, "Epanalepsis." Encyclopedia of Rhetoric and Composition, ed. by Theresa Enos. Taylor & Francis, 1996)



• "The fourth-century grammarian and rhetorician Tiberius lists epanalepsis as a rhetorical figure, but at the conclusion of his explanation uses the term analepsis instead: 'Epanalepsis is when the same word is placed twice in the same clause or in the same sentence, with the same context. . . . Public speakers use analepsis at the beginning, in the same way as palillogia, but Homer used it also at the end.'"
  (Joachim Burmeister, Musical Poetics, trans. by Benito V. Rivera. Yale Univ. Press, 1993)



• "Always Low Prices. Always."
  (Walmart slogan)

Pronunciation: e-pa-na-LEP-sis

Also Known As: inclusio, analepsis