Definition:
A figure of speech that uses disruption or inversion of customary word order to produce a distinctive effect; also, a figure in which language takes a sudden turn--usually an interruption. See also:
Etymology:
From the Greek, "transposed"Examples and Observations:
- "Some rise by sin, and some by virtue fall."
(William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure II.i) - "Object there was none. Passion there was none. I loved the old man."
(Edgar Allan Poe, "The Tell-Tale Heart") - "From Cocoon forth a Butterfly
As Lady from her Door
Emerged--a summer afternoon--
Repairing everywhere."
(Emily Dickinson, "From Cocoon forth a Butterfly") - "And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made"
(W. B. Yeats, "The Lake Isle of Innisfree") - "pity this busy monster manunkind not"
(e.e. cummings) - "Sorry I be but go you must."
(Yoda in Star Wars) - "Most theorists . . . have been content to return to the definition of hyperbaton as an inversion which expresses 'a violent movement of the soul' (Littre).
"Hyperbaton may well be considered to result from inversion because it is possible to recast the sentence so as to integrate the added segment. But the effect characteristic of hyperbaton derives rather from the kind of spontaneity which imposes the addition of some truth, obvious or private, to a syntactic construction apparently already closed. Hyperbaton always consists in an adjacent construction. This appears all the more clearly when the grammatical link seems loosest, as in the case of and preceded by a comma. Ex: 'The arms of the morning are beautiful, and the sea' (Saint-Jean Perse, quoted by Daniel Delas, Poétique-pratique, p. 44)."
(Bernard Marie Dupriez and Albert W. Halsall, A Dictionary of Literary Devices, University of Toronto Press, 1991)
Pronunciation: high PER ba tun
Also Known As: anastrophe, inversion, transcensio, transgressio, tresspasser
