Repetition & Refrain
Gradatio / Climax
A chain of linked clauses, each picking up the last one's key word and raising the stakes until the sequence peaks. The step-by-step climb makes the final term feel earned.
"…tribulation worketh patience; and patience, experience; and experience, hope." — Romans 5:3–4
Don't confuse it with Anadiplosis. One chained repetition is anadiplosis; gradatio is the whole ascending staircase.
In the Reader — 10 excerpts
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?
by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
and, worst of all, theology
…acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which also I believe: "That government is best which governs not at all"
The armies of those I love engirth me and I engirth them, 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.
She had read Paul and Virginia, and she had dreamed of the little bamboo house, the negro Domingo, the dog Fidele, but above all of the sweet friendship of some dear little brother, who seeks red fruit for you on trees taller than steeples, or who runs barefoot over …
She had read Paul and Virginia, and she had dreamed of the little bamboo house, the negro Domingo, the dog Fidele, but above all of the sweet friendship of some dear little brother, who seeks red fruit for you on trees taller than steeples, or who runs barefoot over …
…secure ancestral halls for the summer. A colonial mansion, a hereditary estate, I would say a haunted house, and reach the height of romantic felicity—but that would be asking too much of fate!
For others they sail forever on the horizon, never out of sight, never landing until the Watcher turns his eyes away in resignation, his dreams mocked to death by Time.
Ralph wept for the end of innocence, the darkness of man's heart, and the fall through the air of the true, wise friend called Piggy.
Travels with
Devices that share a passage with gradatio / climax most often — company reveals character.
Parallelism 6 Asyndeton 6 Anaphora 6 Metaphor 4 Apposition / Appositive 4 Personification 3 Hyperbole 3
The rest of the family
Anaphora Epistrophe Symploce Epanalepsis Anadiplosis Epizeuxis Diacope Conduplicatio Polyptoton