Schemes + Tropes

  1. Parallelism

Example: … for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Example: , we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor. — Declaration of Independence


  1. Antithesis—

        Example: [We] shall support any friend, oppose any foe. 

Example: Though studious, he was popular; though argumentative, he was modest; though inflexible, he was candid; and though metaphysical, yet orthodox. — Dr. Samuel Johnson London Chronicle, May  2, 1769


  1. Climax

Example: "Let a man acknowledge his obligations to himself, his family, his country, and his God."

  1. Inversion

 Example: Backward run the sentences, till reels the mind. — From a parody of Time magazine

Example: “If’t be so, For Banquo’s issue have I fil’d my mind,/ For them the gracious Duncan have I murder’d—Shakespeare Macbeth


  1. Parenthesis—

Example: What I am trying to say – and I do not think this an unfair comment – is that we were a much more idealistic generation. — The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro

  1. Apposition—

Example: Mrs. Zadlock, the AP Language and Composition teacher, gave students a long list of schemes and tropes. 

  1. Ellipsis—

Example:And he to England shall along with you — Shakespeare Hamlet, III, iii, 4

Example:I ate seven donuts, my competition, four. 

  1. Asyndeton

Example: Veni, Vidi, Veci (I came, I saw, I conquered.)— Julius Caesar

  1. Polysyndeton—

Example: I said, "Who killed him?" and he said, "I don't know who killed him but he's dead all right," and it was dark and there was water standing in the street and no lights and windows broke and boats all up in the town and trees blown down and everything all blown and I got a skiff and went out and found my boat where I had her inside Mango Key and she was all right only she was full of water.
—Ernest Hemingway "After the Storm."


Anaphora—

Example:   “What the hammer? what the chain?

In what furnace was thy brain?

What the anvil? what dread grasp

Dare its deadly terrors clasp?”

—William Blake “The Tyger”

  1. Epistrophe—

Example: “What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies

within us.” —Ralph Waldo Emerson

Example: The government is of the people, by the people and for the people.—Abraham Lincoln   

  1. Epanalepsis

Example: *Gives language appearance of emotional spontaneity.

Blood hath bought blood, and blows have answered blows:

Strength match’ with strength, and power confronted power.

Shakespeare, King John, II, I, 329-30)



  1. Anadiplosis—

Example:
The love of wicked men converts to fear,
That fear to hate, and hate turns one or both
To worthy danger and deserved death.
—Shakespeare, Richard II 5.1.66-68

  1. Chiasmus—

Example: By day the frolic, and the dance by night. —Samuel Johnson “The Vanity of Human Wishes”

Example: Adam, first of men,/ To first of women, Eve—Milton Paradise Lost


15. Antimetabole—

Example: When the going gets tough, the tough get going. 

“Fair is foul, and foul is fair…”—Shakespeare Macbeth, I, i

  1. Pun—

Example: What is the difference between a conductor and a teacher? The conductor minds the train and a teacher trains the mind.


Zeugma— She took his heart and wallet.

  1. Apostrophe

Example: “With how sad steps, O Moon, thou climb’st the skies!” —Sidney, Astrophel and Stella, Sonnet 31

  1. Paradox—

Example: Art is a form of lying to tell the truth (Pablo Picasso)