We explain what an asyndeton is and various examples. Also, what is a polysyndeton and other figures of speech.
The famous phrase of Julius Caesar gains solemnity thanks to the asyndeton.What is asyndeton?
The asyndeton is the Literary figure consisting of the deletion of one or more conjunctions or links within a sentence that would usually have them (for example, an enumeration), in order to intensify what was said. The name of this figure comes from the Greek words to- ("without"), syn ("With") and deein ("To tie"), and consists of the exact opposite of polysyndeton.
Is Figure of speech It is very common in the literary language, and generally has the purpose of slowing down the sentence, giving more passion or solemnity to what is said, or sometimes, on the contrary, giving it a feeling of dynamism and continuity to what is narrated. A very clear example is that famous phrase of the Roman emperor Julius Caesar (1st century BC):
Vini, vidi, vinci ("I came, I saw, I conquered").
Let's look at how the final "y" that would normally precede "beat" is absent. On the contrary, the juxtaposition of the terms only with the comma gives the content a specific air, which seems to want to normalize or lighten the fact of having won: "I came, I saw, (and just like that, as if nothing else), I won" , which reflects the attitude of Julius Caesar regarding his victory.
Examples of asyndeton
Other possible examples of asyndeton include the following:
- I went to the market and bought tomatoes, potatoes, onions.
- In the street there were people with chinstraps, people without chinstraps, people everywhere.
- The best thing is to be happy, not expect anything from anyone, depend only on yourself.
- The night was cold, uneven, stormy.
- Those women were screaming, dancing, stripping, while he was still in his room.
- That night we drank rum, whiskey, mojito, champagne, coke.
Polysyndeton
The exact opposite of asyndeton is polysyndeton, which consists of the addition of conjunctions or links in a phrase that could well lack them. It usually gives what is said a sense of immediacy or simultaneity, if not of insistence or annoyance. For example, the same phrase from Julius Caesar in the example above would be converted by polysyndeton into: "I came and I saw and I conquered."
Other figures of speech
Apart from asyndeton and polysyndeton, there are other literary figures of interest, such as:
- Etopeia. It consists of the moral description and / or of traditions of a character, allowing the reader to know its interiority.
- Antithesis. It is about the use of two opposite and complementary terms, as part of the same expression.
- Synecdoche. It is a form of metaphor that takes a part of the thing for the whole thing, or vice versa.
- Oxymoron. It consists of the harmonic use in the same expression of two terms of opposite or irreconcilable meaning, in order to obtain an aesthetically powerful image, but contrary to the logic.
- Pleonasm. The direct opposite of the oxymoron, consists of the repetitive or redundant use of two terms that have the same meaning, in order to emphasize or underline what has been said.