Tropes & Figures
Epiphora
Epiphora is a stylistic figure opposite to anaphora: the repetition of identical words, phrases or sound combinations at the end of adjacent verse lines, stanzas or sentences. Epiphora creates a peculiar rhyme-like framing of the text's segments, reinforces their intonational completeness and concentrates attention on the repeated word, which acquires an ever deeper semantic charge. As a means of expressive syntax, epiphora lends speech melodiousness, orderedness and emotional insistence, especially in folk song and lyric. The combination of anaphora and epiphora (when both beginnings and endings are repeated at once) forms a more complex figure — symploce. Epiphora is a characteristic device of the rhythmic and semantic organisation of a poetic text.
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Distinction
Mirror figures of repetition differing by position. Anaphora repeats identical words or phrases at the BEGINNING of adjacent lines or sentences, building emotion from the opening. Epiphora repeats them at the END, creating a rhyme-like framing and focusing attention on the concluding word. Combining both (beginning + end) yields a more complex figure — symploce.
