anadiplosis

literature

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Article History

Greek:: “doubling” or “repetition,”

Plural:: anadiploses

Related Topics:: literature; repetition

anadiplosis, a device in which the last word or phrase of one clause, sentence, or line is repeated at the beginning of the next. An example is the phrase that is repeated between stanzas one and two of John Keats’s poem “The Eve of St. Agnes”:

Numb were the beadsman’s fingers, while he told
His rosary, and while his frosted breath,
Like pious incense from a censer old,
Seem’d taking flight for heaven, without a death,
Past the sweet Virgin’s picture, while his prayer he saith.

His prayer he saith, this patient, holy man: