|
In rhetoric, chiasmus (Latin term from Greek χίασμα, "crossing", from the Greek χιάζω, ''chiázō'', "to shape like the letter Χ") is the figure of speech in which two or more clauses are related to each other through a reversal of structures in order to make a larger point; that is, the clauses display inverted parallelism. Chiasmus was particularly popular in the literature of the ancient world, including Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, where it was used to articulate the balance of order within the text. As a popular example, many long and complex chiasmi have been found in Shakespeare and the Greek and Hebrew texts of the Bible. It is also found throughout the Quran and the Book of Mormon. Today, chiasmus is applied fairly broadly to any "criss-cross" structure, although in classical rhetoric it was distinguished from other similar devices, such as the antimetabole. In its classical application, chiasmus would have been used for structures that ''do not'' repeat the same words and phrases, but invert a sentence's grammatical structure or ideas. The concept of chiasmus on a higher level, applied to motifs, turns of phrase, or whole passages, is called chiastic structure. The elements of simple chiasmus are often labelled in the form A B B A, where the letters correspond to grammar, words, or meaning. For example John F. Kennedy said, "ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country". == Inverted meaning == ''But O, what damned minutes tells he o'er'' ''Who ''dotes'', yet ''doubts''; ''suspects'', yet ''strongly loves''.'' —Shakespeare, Othello 3.3 "Dotes" and "strongly loves" share the same meaning and bracket "doubts" and "suspects". 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「chiasmus」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|