Figure of speech. The first sentence of Aeolus
shows deliberate linguistic patterning: "Before Nelson's
pillar trams slowed, shunted, changed trolley, started..."
But, as is often the case in rhetorical analysis, more than
one term may be applicable. Homoioteleuton is a string
of parallel words with similar endings. But this string also
involves asyndeton.
Homoioteleuton (HO-mee-o-teh-LOOT-on, from Greek homoios
= same + teleute = ending) refers to multiple words
having the "same ending." Gideon Burton (rhetoric.byu.edu)
supplies an example of the device from Henry
Peacham's The Garden of Eloquence: "He is
esteemed eloquent which can invent wittily, remember
perfectly, dispose orderly, figure diversly, pronounce
aptly, confirme strongly, and conclude directly."
Joyce's string of four past-tense verbs does not illustrate
the principle quite so musically, since the final "ed" of two
of them is silent in modern English. But it does perform the
trope of deploying parallel words with similar endings.
Neither Gilbert nor Seidman says
anything about this passage, but both see homoioteleuton in
another string of words later in Aeolus: "mouth
south: tomb womb." This claim seems faulty, since no
distinct endings are involved. Even if one tortures the sense
of the word to construe "outh" and "omb" as endings, they are
not similar to one another. Instead of a chain of words with
similar endings, Stephen is simply recalling two pairs of
dissimilar rhymes.
