What is Prosapodosis?
Prosapodosis is a grammatical technique, particularly a kind of ‘eutrepismusOpens in new window’ where every points or divisions of a statement is followed with causative agents or reasons for each point in the statement. The reason is usually supplied in parallel structure.
Notable Examples of Prosapodosis
- We complain …secondly, of the blue-fire melo-dramatic aspect of the revolving sword; thirdly, of the duplicate nature of the sword, which, if steel, and sufficiently enflamed to do service in burning, would, perhaps, have been in no temper to cut; and on the other hand, if sufficiently cool to have an edge, would have accomplished little in the way of scorching a personage so well accustomed to fire and brimstone and all that, as we have very good reason to believe Lucifer was.
— (Review of The Drama of Exile, 12:7)
- “As I am man, my state is desperate for my master love:
As I am woman (now alas the day)
What trifles sighs shall poor Olivia breathe?
O time, thou must untangle this, not I,
It is too hard a knot for me t’untie.”— (Shakespeare, 12th Night Act II, Scene II (2,2))
