Saint-Charles shaft

Zoopraxiscope by British photographer Eadweard Muybridge. Drawn Ruade of a Donkey (1879). The epanadiplosis suggests an effect of repetition.

Epanadiplosis (from Ancient Greek ἐπαναδίπλωσις/epanadíplôsis, from ἐπί/epí, “on”, ἀνά/aná, “again”, and διπλόος/diplóos, “double”, i.e. “doubling in succession ”1) is a figure of speech in which the same word is used at the end of a clause as at the beginning of a preceding clause. The opposite figure is anadiplosis. It allows for melodic and rhythmic interplay to suggest emphasis or humor. Epanadiplosis can also be used to emphasize a word, a group of words or an idea.

Epanadiplosis is also a narrative figure used in many literary genres, in which case it's called “narrative epanadiplosis”. It's the repetition of an initial scene or motif (in the incipit) at the end (or clausule) of the plot. It suggests that the narrative is closed in on itself.

Nature et limites de la figure

Epanadiplosis is a figure of repetition affecting syntactic position (the order of words in the sentence). For César Chesneau Dumarsais, the figure appears “when, of two correlative propositions, one begins and the other ends with the same word”, or when, according to Henri Suhamy4, only two propositions are involved.

He cites Tacitus5 as an example:

“Principes pro victoria pugnant, comites pro principe (Leaders fight for victory, companions for their leader)”.

More specifically, epanadiplosis is the repetition at the end of a sentence of a word or even a locution located at the beginning of a proposition. The figure therefore concerns the phrasal level, unlike narrative epanadiplosis, which concerns an entire text. It constitutes a linguistic mechanism that is the opposite of anadiplosis, and can be summarized as follows, according to Patrick Bacry6 :

A _______ / _______ A

As in these verses by François de Malherbe7 :

[...] But she was of the world, where the most beautiful things

have the worst fate,

And rose she lived what roses live

In the space of a morning. [...]

For Jean-Jacques Robrieux, epanadiplosis is a figure close to chiasmus8 , as in this line by Victor Hugo, in which the indefinite pronoun “rien” is repeated symmetrically at the beginning and end of the proposition:

“Rien ne me verra plus, je ne verrai plus rien9 ”.

For Nicole Ricalens-Pourchot, epanadiplosis is signaled by the use of “two juxtaposed propositions, separated by a comma or semicolon ‘10 ; it is, therefore, as Georges Molinié notes, a ’microstructural figure”, as it only affects the limits of the sentence, and therefore only plays on both elocution and construction11. It is, moreover, a very rare figure1.

Limits of the figure

Combination with other figures

Epanadiplosis is sometimes confused with epanalepsis, in which the same word or group of words is repeated within the same sentence12 :

“Le temps s'en va, le temps s'en va, ma Dame”. - Pierre de Ronsard, Sonnet à Marie13

However, these two figures, as well as that of anadiplosis, are often used in conjunction12 , as in this excerpt from Eugène Ionesco's Rhinocéros (act i):

“Yes, I have strength, I have strength for several reasons. First I have strength because I have strength, then I have strength because I have moral strength. I also have strength because I'm not an alcoholic.”

Epanadiplosis is also often used in combination with symplosis, as in:

“You in the corner are sure. You're certain, that's for sure.14”

The whole allows for melodic and stylistic effects, since in the symphony the words or groups of words beginning a phrase and those ending it are repeated at the beginning and end of the following phrase. Epanadiplosis is combined, so that there is “an interweaving of repetitions ”15.,

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Anaplodiplosis

Jan Brueghel the Elder, Allegory of Sight and Smell (1618).

Narrative epanadiplosis, or “anaplodiplosis” (anadiplosis in Latin), from the Greek ἀνάπλωσις (“explanation”) and διπλόη (“anything doubled, or divided in two”) is a figure of speech that consists in completing a work, usually a novel, as one has begun it. It consists in repeating, at the very end of a work, the initial motif, event or configuration described in the incipit. Anaplodiplosis is a way of “coming full circle”. At the end of the novel (or film), the reader or viewer encounters an identical or similar situation to that of the incipit, giving the work a certain depth1. This cyclical conclusion is frequently found in short stories.

This process is akin to mise en abyme, frequently used in literature. It is particularly common in film and literature, especially in the fantasy genre16. It gives narrative coherence to the work as a whole, and above all creates an impression of cycle, of eternal return. In a way, the story recounts the motif of natural cycles, such as the return of the seasons or the succession of generations. For the author, this may be an ironic way of saying that we're back where we started, and that everything that has happened in the meantime is of little importance. Or it may simply be an aesthetic device aimed at creating a kind of symmetry, a regular ordering of the work as well17.

Stylistic use

In visual rhetoric, epanadiplosis can be used for comic purposes18 or to capture the imagination:

“Too much tax kills tax

The looping effect of the figure creates the impression of a paradox and a closed maxim, as in Hobbes' example: “Man is a wolf to man”, where the initial argument is taken up as the final argument. In logic and rhetoric, the figure is often used in syllogisms. César Chesneau Dumarsais, in his Traité des tropes, discusses and defines it as: “There is another figure [of words] called epanadiplosis, which occurs when, of two correlative propositions, one begins and the other ends with the same word ”19, as in :

“Man can cure everything, not man.” - Georges Bernanos, Nous autres Français20

The figure can also border on tautology:

“I am as I am”. - Jacques Prévert, Paroles21

According to Bernard Dupriez, the purpose of epanadiplosis is often to underline, or even reiterate22 , as in:

“Childhood knows what it wants. It wants to get out of childhood. - Jean Cocteau, La Difficulté d'être23

Some epanadiploses, however, are the result of the randomness of everyday language, without any particular stylistic research:

“An immobile donkey on a median strip, like a statue of a donkey.”

- Gilbert Cesbron, Journal sans date24

A final effect may be that of parallelism. According to Georges Molinié and Michèle Aquien, epanadiplosis very often coordinates two propositions (in the sense of logical and semantic units) in the same sentence, which constitute repetition, by suggesting a parallel construction. They cite this example from La Bruyère:

“...for this people seems to adore the prince, and the prince adores God”.

The two sentence members that follow the conjugated verb “appears” are coordinated with each other in a strictly parallel structure: “the last word of the first member and the first word of the second member are the same” (this is the nominal group “the prince”). The epanadiplosis is doubled by an antimetabole in this example (for the verbal element: “adore le prince”)11.

Genres covered

Poetry

Epanadiplosis between the first and last lines is a frequent feature of poems. In Les Regrets, Joachim du Bellay forms a palindromic epanadiplosis25 :

Guillaume Apollinaire, for his part, uses the resources of epanadiplosis to make the cycle of the seasons tangible, closing the poem on itself in a single suggestive image26 :

Novel

The incipit and epilogue of Émile Zola's novel Germinal form an epanadiplosis: the same character walks alone along the same road. On the first page, he arrives in the cold night in mining country: “A single idea occupied the empty head of a worker without work and without lodging, the hope that the cold would be less intense after daybreak ‘27 , and on the last page, he leaves Montsou, but in the sunshine, and in hope: ’Penetrated by this hope, Étienne slows his walk, his eyes lost to the right and to the left, in the gaiety of the new season. ”28

Many novels use anaplodiplosis. These include Bernadin de Saint-Pierre's Paul et Virginie (1788), Raymond Queneau's Le Chiendent (1933), James Joyce's Finnegans Wake (1939), Paulo Coelho's L'Alchimiste (1988), Anton Chekhov's Le Sauvage (1889), Eugène Ionesco's La Cantatrice chauve (1950) and Stephen King's The Dark Tower (1982 to 2004).

In Primo Levi's stories and essays (La tregua, I sommersi e i salvati), admittedly far removed from novels, narrative epanadiplosis seals the author's radical pessimism: “What has been can happen again”, so everything is always to be started again29.