Apostrophes

This article deals with the stylistic device apostrophes. For Frank Zappa's album Apostrophe (') see there. For the punctuation mark see apostrophe .

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An apostrophe [ apɔˈstrofe ] ( Greek  ἀποστροφή ) is a stylistic device of rhetoric , less often of literature , and expresses the focus of the author or a figure on a thing or an imaginary person.

The author supposedly changes the speaking situation and puts the actual interlocutor in the position of an uninvolved listener. The sentences are addressed to an imaginary object - this can be an absent person as well as a dead or lifeless thing, which is personified by a very emphatic address . Equally, an apostrophe can put the reader in the position of a conversation partner who is being addressed directly.

Apostrophes are often an exclamation ( exclamatio ) or throw-in ( interiectio ). Often gods or muses are invoked - expressions such as "Jesses, Maria and Josef!" Or "O my God!"

An apostrophe can be used as a rhetorical figure to liven up a text. She wants to give what is said a more haunting effect or bring an interesting note to a long monologue.

Examples

• "Because you, you heights and groves of Alba, yes I beg you now and ask for a testimony ..." ( Cicero : Pro Milone )
• "Cover your sky, Zeus, / With cloud haze!" ( Johann Wolfgang von Goethe : Prometheus )
• "Where there used to be grass, there you sit now, oil tank!" ( Bertolt Brecht : 700 intellectuals worship an oil tank )
• "Explain to me, love, what I cannot explain" ( Ingeborg Bachmann : explain to me, love )