RRhetoric
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Repetition & Refrain

Anaphora

uh-NAF-or-uh / əˈnæfərə

Starting several clauses, sentences, or lines in a row with the same word or phrase. Each repeat adds pressure, and the changing endings carry the idea forward. Common in speeches because listeners feel the pattern without needing to see it.

"We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields…" — Churchill

Don't confuse it with Epistrophe, Symploce. Epistrophe repeats at clause *ends*; symploce does both at once.

Drill this device — 71 excerptsForge one yourself →

In the Reader — 71 excerpts

Deny thy father and refuse thy name;
— William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet · open the passage →
Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die?
— William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice · open the passage →
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
— William Shakespeare, Hamlet · open the passage →
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
— William Shakespeare, Macbeth · open the passage →
Of Man's first disobedience, and the fruit Of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste
— John Milton, Paradise Lost · open the passage →
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
— Thomas Jefferson (Committee of Five), Declaration of Independence · open the passage →
Water, water, every where, And all the boards did shrink; Water, water, every where,
— Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Lyrical Ballads · open the passage →
It was on a dreary night of November that I beheld the accomplishment of my toils. With an anxiety that almost amounted to agony, I collected the instruments of life around me, that I might infuse a spark of being into the lifeless thing that lay before me.
— Mary Shelley, Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus · open the passage →
I hold it true, whate'er befall;
— Alfred, Lord Tennyson, In Memoriam A.H.H. · open the passage →
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
— Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Sonnets from the Portuguese · open the passage →
Call me Ishmael. Some years ago—never mind how long precisely—having little or
— Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale · open the passage →
And what I assume you shall assume,
— Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass · open the passage →
They will not let me off till I go with them, respond to them, And discorrupt them, and charge them full with the charge of the soul.
— Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass · open the passage →
Flood-tide below me! I see you face to face!
— Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass · open the passage →
Each day we descend one step further toward Hell,
— Charles Baudelaire, Les Fleurs du mal · open the passage →
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was
— Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities · open the passage →
So long as there shall exist, by reason of law and custom, a social condemnation, which, in the face of civilization, artificially creates hells on …
— Victor Hugo, Les Misérables · open the passage →
I am a sick man... I am a spiteful man. I am an unattractive man. I believe my liver is diseased. However, I know nothing at all about my disease, and do not know for certain what ails me.
— Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground · open the passage →
With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in.
— Abraham Lincoln, Second Inaugural Address · open the passage →
On an exceptionally hot evening early in July a young man came out of the garret in which he lodged in S. Place and walked slowly, as though in hesitation, towards K. bridge.
— Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment · open the passage →
The more we try to explain such events in history reasonably, the more unreasonable and incomprehensible do they become to us.
— Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace · open the passage →
I have been your doll-wife, just as at home I was Papa's doll-child; and here the children have been my dolls. I thought it great fun when you played with me, just as they thought it great fun when I played with them.
— Henrik Ibsen, Et dukkehjem (A Doll's House) · open the passage →
She had wanted to see life, and fortune had favoured her in a manner which now, as she looked about her, struck her as almost grotesque. The dry staring fact was that she had a great deal of money.
— Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady · open the passage →
Olive Chancellor was unmarried by every implication of her being. She was a spinster as Shelley was a lyric poet, or as the month of August is sultry.
— Henry James, The Bostonians · open the passage →

…and 47 more. Meet the rest in the quiz →

Travels with

Devices that share a passage with anaphora most often — company reveals character.

Metaphor 27 Polysyndeton 24 Asyndeton 21 Antithesis 20 Parallelism 20 Parataxis 19 Personification 18 Litotes 17

The rest of the family

Epistrophe Symploce Epanalepsis Anadiplosis Gradatio / Climax Epizeuxis Diacope Conduplicatio Polyptoton