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Turning one's speech from one audience to another. Most often, apostrophe
occurs when one addresses oneself to an abstraction, to an inanimate object,
or to the absent. |
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Since this
figure often involves emotion, it can overlap with exclamatio. |
| Examples
|
| |
Antony
addresses Caesar's corpse immediately following the assasination in Shakespeare's
Julius Caesar:
O, pardon me, thou bleeding piece of earth,
That I am meek and gentle with these butchers!
Thou art the ruins of the noblest man
That ever lived in the tide of times.
—Shakespeare, Julius Caesar 3.1.254-257
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| Related
Figures |
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Sources: |
Ad Herennium
4.15.22 ("exclamatio"); Quintilian 9.2.38-39 ("aversio"); Aquil. 9 ("apostrophe,"
"aversio"); Sherry (1550) 60 ("apostrophe," "aversio," "aversion"); Peacham
(1577) M4v; Putt. (1589) 244 ("apostrophe," "the turne tale"); Day 1599
90 ("apostrophe," "aversio") ; Melanchthon (1523) C8v |
