We explain what parallelism in rhetoric is, its function, what types exist and various examples. Also, other literary figures.
What is parallelism?
In rhetoric, the parallelism is known as a literary resource repetition, which consists of the reiteration of the same structure in various sentences or prayers, to achieve a rhythmic and sequential effect. That is, it is about distributing the words, the phrases and / or sentences in parallel in the text, respecting a fixed structure.
The parallels can be of four different types, each with its own name and classified according to the formal relationship that they establish between the repeated text sequences. These types are:
- The isocolon or isosilabism, called in one way or another depending on whether one speaks respectively of prose or from poetry, consists of repeating a syllabic length or of clauses or sequences in the sentence. For example, in verses by Tirso de Molina: “To her deaf sighs, / to her prayers, terrible, / to her promises, rock”.
- Parison or syntactic parallelism, which consists of the structural similarity between two or more sequences of prose or verse, in such a way that their syntactic constituents correspond almost exactly. For example, in the verses of John Donne: "I have loved, received and said, / but if loving, receiving, telling, until I am old, / I will not find that hidden mystery."
- Correlation, which consists of obtaining a structural similarity by introducing words in symmetrical places within the sentence or sequences of sentences. For example, in the verses of Pedro Espinosa: "Your beautiful eyes and your sweet mouth / of divine light and fragrant breath / envy the clear sun and adore the wind / because of what one sees and the other touches."
- The semantic parallelism, which consists of the reiteration of the meaning of the same phrase, but said in some other way. For example, in Psalms from The Bible: "The wicked believe that God forgets, / that he covers his face and never sees anything."
Examples of parallelism
The following are other examples of parallels of different kinds:
- In the verses of William Shakespeare: “Oh, damn the hand that made these holes; / Cursed is the heart that had the heart to do it; / Damn the blood that this blood lets out ”.
- In the verses of Galmés de Fuentes: “She, as the daughter of kings, / is buried at the altar; / to him, as the son of counts, / a few steps further back ”.
- In the prose of James Fenimore Cooper: "He who is to be saved will be saved, and he who is predestined to be damned will be damned."
- In Luis Cernuda's verses: “Beyond life / I want to tell you with death; / Beyond love, / I want to tell you with oblivion ”.
- In Pablo Neruda's verses: “It was thirst, hunger, and you were the fruit. / It was the duel and the ruins, and you were the miracle ”.
- In the verses of Jaime Gil de Biedma: “Apparently it is possible to declare oneself a man / Apparently it is possible to say No”.
Other literary figures
Besides parallelism, there are other literary figures, such as:
- The synesthesia, which consists of the mixture in a phrase of auditory, visual, taste, tactile sensations, etc., in the manner of the metaphor (synaesthetic metaphor).
- The hyperbaton, which consists of altering the syntax Ordinary of a phrase to achieve a greater expressive effect or to achieve a certain rhyme.
- The asyndeton, which consists of the suppression or omission of the links which would naturally go in an enum, using a pause (comma intonation) instead.
- The polysyndeton, which is the opposite of the previous case, since it consists of the normally excessive use of a nexus or a conjunction within an enum of some kind.
- Paronomasia, which consists of the use of paronyms (words with similar sounds but different meanings) in the sentence to induce the pun, usually with a sense ironic or satirical.