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I • REPETITION OF WORDS AND PHRASES. 1. Simple Repetition of Words and Phrases: EPIZEUXIS, EPIMONE, etc.

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Repetition is one of the most important general ideas in rhetoric, and later chapters consider a wide range of ways in which it can be used: repetition of words and phrases at the beginning or end of successive sentences or clauses, or repetition of sentence structure, of conjunctions, and so forth. But the most basic use of the principle, and our subject here, is the simple repetition of words per se for the sake of emphasis, drama, or beauty. The best-known line from Conrad’s Heart of Darkness – The horror! The horror! – is an example of one scheme from this family: EPIMONE (e-pi-mo-nee), or the repetition of phrases. The same device also figures prominently in the most celebrated speech in French history, Charles de Gaulle’s Appeal of 18 June. France had just fallen to the Nazis, and de Gaulle was speaking to the people of his country by radio from London:

Car la France n’est pas seule! Elle n’est pas seule! Elle n’est pas seule!

(For France is not alone! She is not alone! She is not alone!) The speech is generally credited as the formal start of the French Resistance.

Repetition can create memorable effects in still simpler forms. Consider a pair of utterances made within two years of each other in the middle of the twentieth century. One is a famous line from the movie Casablanca: Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine. Another is an enduring moment from a speech of Winston Churchill’s praising the pilots who had fended off German air strikes during the Battle of Britain: Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few. Both of these quotations are remembered well today, and both of them owe much of their fame to the same rhetorical device: the use of the same word repeatedly, with other words between each repetition – a figure known as CONDUPLICATIO (con-du-pli-cat-ee-oh), or, especially when there are just a few other words between the repeated ones, DIACOPE (di-ac-o-pee).

Let us turn to a more systematic look at the uses of repeated words.

1. Epizeuxis. Our first device, EPIZEUXIS (e-pi-zeux-is), is the repetition of words consecutively. The simple and classic form repeats a word thrice: a verbal pounding of the table.

Reputation, reputation, reputation! Oh, I have lost my reputation! I have lost the immortal part of myself, and what remains is bestial. My reputation, Iago, my reputation!

Othello, 2, 3

Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb-nail.

Thoreau, Walden (1854)

Like the Draconian laws, this bill had blood! blood! – felony! felony! felony! in every period and in every sentence.

Grattan, speech in the Irish Parliament (1787)

[U]pon all that has been hitherto written on the subject of opium, whether by travellers in Turkey (who may plead their privilege of lying as an old immemorial right), or by professors of medicine, writing ex cathedra, I have but one emphatic criticism to pronounce – Lies! lies! lies!

de Quincey, Confessions of an English Opium Eater (1821)

A common variation on the triplet starts with two repetitions of a word but delays the last one for a moment. The couplet at the start typically comes off as a cry or gasp or call to battle; the singlet then arrives with more thought attached, and explains the feeling behind the couplet, or elaborates on it, or makes it more articulate.

O Romeo, Romeo! wherefore art thou Romeo?

Romeo and Juliet, 2, 2

A horse! a horse! my kingdom for a horse!

Richard III, 5, 4

The heart! the heart! ’tis God’s anointed; let me pursue the heart!

Melville, Pierre (1852)

The common prose applications put more space between the couplet at the start and the repetition that comes later.

[T]o these evils, monstrous as they are, you owe it to your national character, to truth, to justice, to every consideration, political, social, religious, moral, at once to provide the cure. What shall it be? Public opinion! Public opinion! We have been hearing of it this long time – this many a day we have been hearing of public opinion.

Sheil, speech in the House of Commons (1843)

Ill! Ill! I am bearded and bullied by a shop-boy, and she beseeches him to pity me and remember I am ill!

Dickens, Nicholas Nickleby (1839)

Owners, owners? Thou art always prating to me, Starbuck, about those miserly owners, as if the owners were my conscience.

Melville, Moby-Dick (1851)

We were told – told emphatically and abundantly – that the method of their going would be a masterpiece of tactical skill. Tactics! Tactics! Ladies and gentlemen, the country is tired of their tactics.

Campbell-Bannerman, speech at London (1905)

The reverse order is less common but also effective: one, then two, in which case the pattern is not quite one of exclamation followed by explanation; it more commonly is a statement about a thing, then an extra blast of emphasis as if the speaker can’t contain himself:

Damn her, lewd minx! O damn her, damn her!

Othello, 3, 3

Mr. Nickleby against all the world. There’s nobody like him. A giant among pigmies, a giant, a giant!

Dickens, Nicholas Nickleby (1839)

Death and devils! men, it is Moby Dick ye have seen – Moby Dick – Moby Dick!

Melville, Moby-Dick (1851)

Strictly speaking these last examples are cases of epimone (the repetition of phrases), not just epizeuxis (repetition of individual words); epimone is considered in more detail below. Here as elsewhere in the book, minor liberties sometimes are taken with the placement of examples for the sake of showing them where they will be most instructive.

2. Conduplicatio generally. As mentioned in the introduction to this chapter, conduplicatio likewise involves repetition of the same word, but this time with each instance separated by other words. Some examples with repeated nouns:

No lawyer can say so; because no lawyer could say so without forfeiting his character as a lawyer.

Grattan, speech in the Irish Parliament (1793)

Before I had been standing at the window five minutes, they somehow conveyed to me that they were all toadies and humbugs, but that each of them pretended not to know that the others were toadies and humbugs: because the admission that he or she did know it, would have made him or her out to be a toady and humbug.

Dickens, Great Expectations (1861)

Coming back to the same word makes it a theme of the utterance and leaves it strongly in the listener’s ear. Some examples with repeated modifiers:

A bad cause will ever be supported by bad means and bad men. . . .

Paine, The American Crisis (1783)

Verily, her ways were as the ways of the inscrutable penguins in building their inscrutable nests, which baffle all science, and make a fool of a sage.

Melville, Mardi (1849)

Too often the American that himself makes his fortune, builds him a great metropolitan house, in the most metropolitan street of the most metropolitan town.

Melville, Pierre (1852)

Eighteen of Mr. Tangle’s learned friends, each armed with a little summary of eighteen hundred sheets, bob up like eighteen hammers in a pianoforte, make eighteen bows, and drop into their eighteen places of obscurity.

Dickens, Bleak House (1853)

Cases of conduplicatio can be combined, as in this fine case where several nouns and modifiers (empire, revenue, army, worst) are repeated to create a tightly wound effect:

I allow, indeed, that the Empire of Germany raises her revenue and her troops by quotas and contingents; but the revenue of the Empire and the army of the Empire is the worst revenue and the worst army in the world.

Burke, Speech on Conciliation with the Colonies (1775)

3. Conduplicatio for enlargement. A distinctive type of conduplicatio, worth treating separately, occurs when the speaker repeats a word for the sake of elaborating on it in some way.

a. To strengthen a statement. The repetition of a word with more emphatic language around it often comes as a little surprise, and when it is just for the sake of being more pejorative it can produce a bit of amusement.

Mr. Urquiza had the misfortune (equally common in the old world and the new) of being a knave; and also a showy specious knave.

de Quincey, The Spanish Nun (1847)

Omar Khayyam’s wine-bibbing is bad, not because it is wine-bibbing. It is bad, and very bad, because it is medical wine-bibbing.

Chesterton, Heretics (1905)

Butchers we are, that is true. But butchers, also, and butchers of the bloodiest badge have been all Martial Commanders whom the world invariably delights to honor.

Melville, Moby-Dick (1851)

b. To expand a statement or further define it.

This pulpit style, revived after so long a discontinuance, had to me the air of novelty, and of a novelty not wholly without danger.

Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France (1791)

You can blast my other passions, but revenge remains – revenge, henceforth dearer than light or food!

Shelley, Frankenstein (1818)

Conduplicatio of this kind may be extended beyond just the one repetition; the word can be repeated again to permit enlargement upon it in different directions.

Sir, I pronounce the author of such sentiments to be guilty of attempting a detestable fraud on the community; a double fraud; a fraud which is to cheat men out of their property, and out of the earnings of their labor, by first cheating them out of their understandings.

Webster, speech in the Senate (1834)

I think, and shall try to show, that it is wrong – wrong in its direct effect, letting slavery into Kansas and Nebraska, and wrong in its prospective principle, allowing it to spread to every other part of the wide world where men can be found inclined to take it.

Lincoln, debate with Stephen Douglas at Peoria (1854)

c. To add explanation.

And the odious letters in the writing became very long; – odious because he had to confess in them over and over again that his daughter, the very apple of his eye, had been the wife of a scoundrel.

Trollope, The Prime Minister (1876)

The public interests, because about them they have no real solicitude, they abandon wholly to chance; I say to chance, because their schemes have nothing in experience to prove their tendency beneficial.

Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France (1791)

d. The double use of conduplicatio. A classic pattern in the use of this scheme involves two initial claims, each of which is then repeated with elaboration or reasons for it.

Sir, he was a scoundrel, and a coward: a scoundrel, for charging a blunderbuss against religion and morality; a coward, because he had not resolution to fire it off himself, but left half a crown to a beggarly Scotchman, to draw the trigger after his death!

Johnson, in Boswell’s Life (1791)

We are dregs and scum, sir: the dregs very filthy, the scum very superior.

Shaw, Man and Superman (1903)

I need not excuse myself to your lordship, nor, I think, to any honest man, for the zeal I have shown in this cause; for it is an honest zeal, and in a good cause.

Burke, A Vindication of Natural Society (1756)

e. Churchillian uses of conduplicatio. Churchill made frequent and good use of conduplicatio.

If the Government and people of the USA have a word to speak for the salvation of the world, now is the time and now is the last time when words will be of any use.

Churchill, speech at London (1938)

The repetition of time emphasizes it, and the fresh language afterwards is emphasized as well because it is the excuse for saying the word a second time.

Now all the difficulty about the tribunal has been removed, and removed by the simple process of complete surrender on our part of the whole case.

Churchill, speech in the House of Commons (1938)

The device adds rhetorical power because each initial clause sounds complete in itself; then comes a bit of repetition and elaboration, slightly against expectations – and then perhaps still another round of the same, as here:

[I]n the east, take Constantinople; take it by ships if you can; take it by soldiers if you must; take it by whichever plan, military or naval, commends itself to your military experts, but take it, and take it soon, and take it while time remains.

Churchill, speech in the House of Commons (1915)

Since take it is a phrase rather than a single word, this also can be considered a case of epimone – to which we now turn.

4. Epimone. We now examine the repetition of entire phrases.

a. Doublets.

I tell you, sir, I’m serious! and now that my passions are roused, I say this house is mine, sir; this house is mine, and I command you to leave it directly.

Goldsmith, She Stoops to Conquer (1773)

[T]o send forth the infidel savage – against whom? against your Protestant brethren; to lay waste their country, to desolate their dwellings, and extirpate their race and name with these horrible hell-hounds of savage war – hell-hounds, I say, of savage war!

Pitt, speech in the House of Lords (1777)

The cause, then, Sir, the cause! Let the world know the cause which has thus induced one State of the Union to bid defiance to the power of the whole, and openly to talk of secession.

Webster, speech in the Senate (1833)

b. Triplets. The longer the phrase, the less consecutive repetition it will stand; so the triplets in a case of epimone tend to be shorter.

Most lamentable day, most woful day,

That ever, ever, I did yet behold!

O day! O day! O day! O hateful day!

Romeo and Juliet, 4, 5

“He was a beggar, perhaps.” Mr. Dick shook his head, as utterly renouncing the suggestion; and having replied a great many times, and with great confidence, “No beggar, no beggar, no beggar, sir!’”

Dickens, David Copperfield (1850)

You seem to come like my own anger, my own malice, my own – whatever it is – I don’t know what it is. But I am ill-used, I am ill-used, I am ill-used!

Dickens, Little Dorrit (1857)

c. The refrain. Repetition of longer phrases is gentler on the ear when the phrases are spread apart, which also can enable them to serve as a kind of chorus, or burden, as when showing how different possibilities provoke the same reply.

Who is here so base that would be a bondman? If any, speak; for him have I offended. Who is here so rude that would not be a Roman? If any, speak; for him have I offended. Who is here so vile that will not love his country? If any, speak; for him have I offended. I pause for a reply.

Julius Caesar, 3, 2

There I have another bad match: a bankrupt, a prodigal, who dare scarce show his head on the Rialto; a beggar, that was us’d to come so smug upon the mart. Let him look to his bond. He was wont to call me usurer; let him look to his bond. He was wont to lend money for a Christian courtesy; let him look to his bond.

The Merchant of Venice, 3, 1

Methinks now this coined sun wears a ruddy face; but see! aye, he enters the sign of storms, the equinox! and but six months before he wheeled out of a former equinox at Aries! From storm to storm! So be it, then. Born in throes, ’t is fit that man should live in pains and die in pangs! So be it, then! Here’s stout stuff for woe to work on. So be it, then.

Melville, Moby-Dick (1851)

d. Intermittent repetition of phrases. A less rhythmic and more spontaneous effect can be had by circling back to the same or a nearly identical phrase less systematically. The speaker doesn’t mean to offer a refrain; he just can’t help saying the thing again and again.

Say not to me that it is not the lamp of lamps. I say to you it is. I say to you, a million of times over, it is. It is! I say to you that I will proclaim it to you, whether you like it or not; nay, that the less you like it, the more I will proclaim it to you.

Dickens, Bleak House (1853)

I say we must necessarily undo these violent oppressive acts; they must be repealed – you will repeal them; I pledge myself for it, that you will in the end repeal them; I stake my reputation on it – I will consent to be taken for an idiot, if they are not finally repealed.

Pitt, speech in the House of Lords (1770)

What could follow but one vast spoliation? One vast spoliation! That would be bad enough. That would be the greatest calamity that ever fell on our country. Yet would that a single vast spoliation were the worst!

Macaulay, speech in the House of Commons (1842)

e. Emphasized repetition, in which the speaker alerts the listener to it.

There is no retreat but in submission and slavery! Our chains are forged! Their clanking may be heard on the plains of Boston! The war is inevitable – and let it come! I repeat it, sir, let it come!

Henry, speech at the Second Revolutionary Congress of Virginia (1775)

When you have to attend to things of that sort, to the mere incidents of the surface, the reality – the reality, I tell you – fades.

Conrad, Heart of Darkness (1899)

False, I repeat it, with all the vehemence of indignant asservation, utterly false is the charge habitually preferred against the religion which Englishmen have laden with penalties, and have marked with degradation.

Sheil, speech at Penenden Heath (1828)

5. EPANALEPSIS (ep-an-a-lep-sis) occurs when the same word or phrase is used at the beginning and end of a sentence or set of them – e.g., “The King is dead. Long live the King!” (or, in the original French, Le Roi est mort. Vive le Roi!). The usual effect is a sense of circuitry; the second instance of the repeated word completes a thought about it.

Cassius from bondage will deliver Cassius.

Julius Caesar, 1, 3

Ambition must be made to counteract ambition.

Madison, Federalist 51

Shakspeare will never be made by the study of Shakspeare.

Emerson, Self-Reliance (1841)

The minority gives way not because it is convinced that it is wrong, but because it is convinced that it is a minority.

Stephen, Liberty, Equality, Fraternity (1873)

All buttoned-up men are weighty. All buttoned-up men are believed in. Whether or no the reserved and never-exercised power of unbuttoning, fascinates mankind; whether or no wisdom is supposed to condense and augment when buttoned up, and to evaporate when unbuttoned; it is certain that the man to whom importance is accorded is the buttoned-up man.

Dickens, Little Dorrit (1857)

A prominent case of epanalepsis occurs in Brutus’s speech at the funeral of Julius Caesar, where the device is used twice and then relaxed at the end – a useful idea (a pattern, then relief from it) considered more closely in later chapters.

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: censure me

in your wisdom, and awake your senses, that you

may the better judge.

Julius Caesar, 3, 2

6. Special effects.

a. Repetition to suggest motion, action, or sound.

But, sir, from the light in which he appears to hold the wavering conduct of up, up, up – and down, down, down – and round, round, round, – we are led to suppose, that his real sentiments are not subject to vary, but have been uniform throughout.

Livingston, speech at New York Ratifying Convention (1788)

A good surgeon is worth a thousand of you. I have been in surgeons’ hands often, and have always found reason to depend upon their skill; but your art, Sir, what is it? – but to daub, daub, daub; load, load, load; plaster, plaster, plaster; till ye utterly destroy the appetite first, and the constitution afterwards, which you are called in to help.

Richardson, Clarissa (1748)

My head is playing all the tunes in the world, ringing such peals! It has just finished the “Merry Christ Church Bells,” and absolutely is beginning “Turn again, Whittington.” Buz, buz, buz; bum, bum, bum; wheeze, wheeze, wheeze; fen, fen, fen; tinky, tinky, tinky; cr’annch.

Lamb, letter to Coleridge (1800)

b. Demands and exhortations.

[T]urn ye, turn ye from your evil ways; for why

will ye die, O house of Israel?

Ezekiel 33:11

Work on,

My medicine, work!

Othello, 4, 1

“Lead 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)

Farnsworth's Classical English Rhetoric

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