The ringing cadence of the word "child" is not only a "turning about" from one line to the next, but serves to root our mind or set our mind on the idea. The rhetorical device of antistrophe, which other scholars have used interchangeably with epistrophe (a "turning upon" something), recognizes something very crucial about the nature of the human mind. Simply put, our minds tend to wander off in their own directions, even when we hear a convincing or attractively-put argument. Thus, our minds always need to be corraled, brought back to a center, re-focused. It is not a mental deficiency more than a simple fact of our human nature. Minds wander. By realizing this elementary fact, which most academicians never do, the speaker is able to lead the audience easily in the direction s/he desires. No one, who once hears I Cor. 13 will ever forget the fourfold use of "child" in verse 11.

An Example from Puttenham

Puttenham introduces antistrophe in his treatment of modes of repetition. In contrast to the earlier illustrations, where the repetition is at the beginning of the line (called by most rhetoricians anaphora), "Ye have another sort of repetition quite contrary to the former when ye make one word finish many verses in sute, and that which is harder, to finish many clauses in the middest of your verses or dittie (p. 165)." One of the "ditties" he provides gives repetition in the middle of the verse (which he calls "harder"):

"Her lowly lookes, that gave life to my love,/ With spitefull speach, curtnesse and crueltie:/ She kild my love, let her rigour remove,/ Her cherefull lights and speaches of pitie/ Revive my love: anone with great disdaine,/ She shinnes my love, and after by a traine/ She seekes my love, and saith she loves me most,/ But seeing her love, so lightly wonne and lost:/ I longd not for her love, for well I thought,/ Firme is the love, if it be as it ought."

We can agree with Puttenham in two particulars: first, that antistrophe is difficult when the repetition is in the middle of the line and, second, that he has indeed given us a rather insignificant "dittie!" Puttenham concludes the section with these words: "The Greeks call this figure Antistrophe, the Latines, conversio, I following the originall call him the counterturne, because he turnes counter in the middest of every meetre (p.166)."

A Final Thought

This discussion does leave one idea hanging, however. It is not the notion of inversion, which I consider a grammatical more than rhetorical point (though don't ask me the difference, now that I think about it!). It is also not the vocabulary of repetition, for we now know that we can call it antistrophe, epistrophe, conversio or counterturne. What remains is a word which is one of the definitions in the Century Dictionary and appears as a separate word, antistrophon, in the OED. Lanham calls it antistrephon.

It, too, means a "turning to the opposite side," but is defined in these sources as "an argument that turns one's opponent's arguments or proofs to one's own purpose (Lanham, p.16)." Thus, it seems to be the counterturne in argument, rather than just a turning back, so to speak, of words to a word used in the previous line. The 1913 Webster's Unabridged cites John Milton for its definition as "an argument retorted on an opponent," but the OED, which has the quotation from Milton that Webster's picked up is much more ambiguous. "I turne his Antistrophon upon his own head." It could suggest an already advanced oppositional statement; it could, alternatively just suggest an argument. In any case I think it would be adequate to say, "The professor commended her for great use of antistrophon when she employed the very words of her opponent to skewer him."

Enough for one day.