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Prolepsis

Rhetorical Devices
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

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The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

Prolepsis is an anticipation of a future event or objection. In narrative it appears as a flashforward, while in argument it can answer a response before it is made.

Detailed Definition
Prolepsis brings what is future, expected, or hypothetical into the present of a poem. A speaker may foretell an outcome, describe a future loss as though it has already happened, or anticipate a reader's objection and answer it in advance. As a flashforward, the device creates suspense or tragic inevitability because later knowledge shadows current action. In lyric poetry, prolepsis can dramatize hope, dread, prophecy, or mourning, showing how imagination projects beyond the immediate moment and changes the emotional meaning of what is seen now.
Example
Example in poetry:
“I looked upon the soldier’s empty chair and called it a widow’s chair” names its future meaning before the battle occurs; “Tomorrow’s ruins already sleep beneath these shining towers” treats a future destruction as present; “The child held the seedling, future forest trembling in her hand” anticipates what the seed will become; “I kissed the newborn’s brow and saw the old woman she would one day be” leaps forward in time
Additional Notes
Prolepsis has two important contexts. In narrative, it is a flashforward that reveals or hints at a later event; in rhetoric, it anticipates an objection and addresses it. Context determines the meaning. Narrative prolepsis can create suspense or tragic irony when readers know the future before characters do, while argumentative prolepsis overlaps with procatalepsis.
Other Meanings of “Prolepsis”
Also Known As
Anticipation Flash-Forward Narrative Foreshadowing
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