Synonymic Repetition in Late Latin and Romance

Abstract

The use of synonyms in pairs or series is a familiar and much discussed literary device. While there may be many psychological and cultural reasons for the use of pairs of synonyms,l and while classical Latin writers employed such pairs or series,2 the device seems to have mushroomed in the early Middle Ages, where it can be traced through the medieval Latin rhetorics and texts, as well as the early vernacular literatures. Quite recently several detailed studies have been devoted to the problem of the use of pairs or series of synonyms. Most prominent among the authors of these studies are Elwert3 and Pellegrini4 and a circle of scholars associated with the latter.5 There seem to be some differences concerning the interpretation of the origins as well as the nature of the phenomenon. Elwert points out that medieval rhetoric stressed synonymic repetition in series of three (the 'tricolon') rather than mere doubling ('dicolon'), and compares the use of pairs of synonyms to affective gemination. In other words, he feels that the use of pairs of synonyms is a popular rather than a completely learned phenomenon. Pellegrini links the 'iterazione sinonimica' more closely to learned Latin rhetoric:6