Types of Repetition

Question

In this stanza from The Tide River by Charles Kingsley, the poet employs repetition with phrases like 'dank and foul' and 'foul and dank,' altering the order of the same words in lines 1 and 3. Are there specific names of repetition types in poetry?

Dank and foul, dank and foul,
By the smoky town in its murky cowl;
Foul and dank, foul and dank,
By wharf and sewer and slimy bank;
Darker and darker the farther I go,
Baser and baser the richer I grow;
Who dare sport with the sin-defiled?
Shrink from me, turn from me, mother and child.

Answer 1

The repetition of two terms, but in the opposite order, is an antimetabole. It’s a common device in poetry and prose, emphasizing that a contrast or a comparison applies in both directions, and pleasing in its symmetry. Here are some examples in poetry, from Shakespeare’s sonnets:

Music to hear, why hear’st thou music sadly? [8.1]
But day by night and night by day oppressed. [28.4]
Increasing store with loss, and loss with store. [64.8]
Applying fears to hopes, and hopes to fears, [119.3]
Is lust in action, and till action, lust [129.2]
All this the world well knows yet none knows well, [129.15]

From Milton’s Paradise Lost:

Can make a Heav’n of Hell, a Hell of Heav’n. [1.255]
Of fierce extreams, extreams by change more fierce, [2.599]
Both all things vain, and all who in vain things [3.448]
The Hell within him, for within him Hell [4.20]
So farwel Hope, and with Hope farwel Fear, [4.108]
Left to his own free Will, his Will though free, [5.236]
And Earth be chang’d to Heavn, & Heav’n to Earth, [7.160]

From Browning’s The Ring and the Book:

One calls the square round, t’other the round square— [4.36]
Hell in life here, hereafter life in hell: [4.252]
Letters from wife to priest, from priest to wife,— [4.1033]
I knew the knave, the knave knew me. And thus [6.1106]
To live, and see her learn, and learn by her, [6.2056]
Show best was worst and worst would have been best. [8.432]
And make amends,—be there amends to make! [10.1921]

The question asks about other terms for repetition. Here are a few, with examples from Shakespeare:

• Anadiplosis is the repetition of the last word or phrase of the preceding clause at the start of the next. (“To die, to sleep. To sleep, perchance to dream”)
• Antanaclasis is the repetition of a word in a different sense. (“Put out the light, and then put out the light”)
• Epistrophe is the repetition of a word at the end of successive clauses. (“Hourly joys be still upon you! Juno sings her blessings on you.”)
• Diacope is a repetition with one or a few intervening words. (“I am dying, Egypt, dying”)
• Epanadiplosis is the repetition of the first word or words of a clause at the end. (“The King of England, when we know the King.”)
• Epizeuxis is the repetition of a single word. (“O wonderful, wonderful, most wonderful wonderful”)
• Polyptoton is the use of different words deriving from the same root. (“With eager feeding food doth choke the feeder”)
• Polysyndeton is the repetition of conjunctions. (“If I dare eat, or drink, or breathe, or live”)