Quick Facts
- Also called:
- anastrophe
- Related Topics:
- prosody
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inversion
literature
Also known as: anastrophe
inversion, in literary style and rhetoric, the syntactic reversal of the normal order of the words and phrases in a sentence, as, in English, the placing of an adjective after the noun it modifies (âthe form divineâ), a verb before its subject (âCame the dawnâ), or a noun preceding its preposition (âworlds betweenâ). Inversion is most commonly used in poetry in which it may both satisfy the demands of the metre and achieve emphasis:
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure dome decree
Inversion used simply for the sake of maintaining a rhyme scheme is considered a literary defect, although it is a common convention in folk ballads:
Then up spoke the captain of our gallant ship,
And a well-spoken man was he;
âI have married a wife in Salem town,
And tonight she a widow will beâ

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