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Terminal reiteration

Device
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

The emphatic restatement of a crucial word, phrase, or motif at a poem’s close to reinforce theme or emotional impact.

Detailed Definition
Final lines that repeat or restate earlier material, creating circular structure through exact or close duplication at poem's end. Villanelles depend on terminal reiteration with opening lines returning as conclusion. Creates satisfying sense of closure through return to familiar elements while potentially revealing how context changes meaning through journey between first and final appearances. Differs from looser closing echo by being more exact repetition. Can emphasize themes through strategic duplication or demonstrate how same words mean differently in changed contexts.
Example
Example in poetry:
Terminal reiteration appears in Dylan Thomas’s “Do Not Go Gentle”: “Rage, rage against the dying of the light”; in Maya Angelou’s “Still I Rise,” “I rise” closes stanzas with accumulating power; in Langston Hughes’s “The Negro Speaks of Rivers,” “My soul has grown deep like the rivers” returns transformed; in Gwendolyn Brooks’s “We Real Cool,” the repeated “We” ends each line until the final “Die soon”; in Claudia Rankine’s “Citizen,” “What did you say?” recurs to underscore racial erasure.
Additional Notes
Final lines that repeat or restate earlier material. Creates circular structure and sense of closure. Villanelles depend on terminal reiteration with repeated refrains. Can emphasize themes through strategic repetition. Differs from closing echo by being more exact duplication.
Also Known As
final echo closing repetition terminal recurrence end-point duplication Epiphora
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