An example from a speech in Paradise Lost of every rhetorical device listed on Wikipedia.

This was an appendix to an essay I did on the pleasure of reading Paradise Lost aloud, the whole of which I should probably rewrite at some point.

Sonic devices

• Alliteration: ‘Defaced, deflowered, and now to death devote’ (Adam, Bk IX, l. 901)

• Assonance: ‘Who would not, finding way, break loose from Hell,/ Though thither doomed?’ (Satan, Bk IV, ll. 889-90)

• Consonance: ‘over fields and waters, as in air/ Smooth sliding without step’ (Adam, Bk VIII, ll. 301-2)

• Cacophony: ‘fate shall yield/ To fickle chance, and chaos judge the strife’ (Mammon, Bk II, ll. 232-3)

• Onomatopeia: ‘and his altar breathes/ ambrosial odours and ambrosial flowers’ (Mammon, Bk II, ll. 244-5)

Word repetition

• Anadiplosis: ‘will and reason (reason is also choice)’ (The Father, Bk III, l. 108)

• Conduplicatio: ‘God saw the light was good;/ And light from darkness by the hemisphere/ Divided: light the day, and darkness night,/ He named.’ (Raphael, Bk VII, ll. 249-51)

• Anaphora: ‘Go; for thy stay, not free, absents thee more;/ Go in thy native innocence’ (Adam, Bk IX, ll. 372-3)

• Epistrophe: ‘the sun’s orb, made porous to receive/ And drink the liquid light, firm to retain/ Her gathered beams, great palace now of light./ Hither, as to their fountain, other stars/Repairing in their golden urns draw light.’ (Raphael, Bk VII, ll. 361-5)

• Symploce: ‘How art thou lost, how on a sudden lost’ (Adam, Bk IX, l. 900)

• Epanalepsis: ‘So man, as is most just,/ Shall satisfy for man’ (The Father, Bk III, ll. 294-5)

• Epizeuxis: ‘never from my heart; no, no’ (Adam, Bk IX, l. 913)

• Antanaclasis: ‘whose fruitful womb/ Shall fill the world more numerous with thy sons,/ Than with these various fruits’ (Raphael, Bk V, ll. 388-90)

• Diacope: ‘And to our seed (O hapless seed!) derived’ (Adam, Bk X, l. 965’)

Word relation

• Antithesis: ‘Friendly to man, far from deceit or guile’ (Eve, Bk IX, l. 772)

• Antimetabole: ‘Man is to live, and all things live for man’ (Adam, Bk XI, l. 161)

• Chiasmus: ‘no unharmonious mixture foul,/ Eject him, tainted now; and purge him off,/ As a distemper’ (The Father, Bk XI, ll. 51-3)21

• Asyndeton: ‘Hear, all ye angels, progeny of light,/ Thrones, dominations, princedoms, virtues, powers’ (The Father, Bk V, ll. 600-1)

• Polysyndeton: ‘Anger, and obstinacy, and hate, and guile’ (God, Bk X, l. 114)

• Auxesis: ‘hours, or days, or months, or yeares’ (Raphael, Bk VIII, l. 69)

• Catacosmesis: ‘In forest wild, in thicket, brake, or den’ (Raphael, Bk VII, l. 458)

• Oxymoron: ‘But I shall die a living death?’ (Adam, Bk X, l. 788)

• Zeugma: ‘What hinders then/ To reach, and feed at once both body and mind?’ (Eve, Bk IX, ll. 778-9)

Discourse level

• Amplification: ‘who reason for their law refuse—/Right reason for their law, and for their king’ (The Father, Bk VI, ll. 41-2)

• Pleonasm: ‘man disobeying,/ Disloyal, breaks his fealty, and sins’ (The Father, Bk III, ll. 203-4)

• Antanagoge: ‘well may we labour still to dress/ This garden, still to tend plant, herb and flower,/ Our pleasant task enjoined, but till more hands/ Aid us, the work under our labour grows’ (Eve, Bk IX, ll. 205-9)

• Apophasis: ‘I would not cease/ To wearie him with my assiduous cries’ (Adam, Bk XI, ll. 309-10)

• Aporia: ‘Did I request thee, maker, from my clay/ To mould me man?’ (Adam, Bk X, ll. 743-4)

• Diasyrmus: ‘Was she thy God, that her thou didst obey’ (God, Bk X, l. 145)

• Derision: ‘O loss of one in heaven to judge of wise’ (Gabriel, Bk IV, l. 904)

• Enthymeme: ‘God therefore cannot hurt ye, and be just;’ (Satan, Bk IX, l. 700)

• Hyperbole: ‘thou to me/ Art all things under heaven’ (Eve, Bk XII, ll. 617-8)

• Hypophora: ‘Hadst thou the same free will and power to stand?/ Thou hadst;’ (Satan, Bk IV, ll. 66-7)

• Innuendo: ‘such joy thou took’st/ With me in secret that my womb conceived’ (Sin, Bk II, ll. 765-6)

• Metanoia: ‘thou didst not much gainsay,/ Nay didst permit, approve, and fair dismiss’ (Eve, Bk IX, ll. 1158-9)

• Procatalepsis: ‘But perhaps/ The way seems difficult and steep to scale/ With upright wing against a higher foe./ Let such bethink them, if the sleepy drench/ Of that forgetful lake benumb not still,/ That in our proper motion we ascend/ Up to our native seat’ (Moloch, Bk II, ll. 70-6)

• Understatement: ‘I miss thee here,/ Not pleased’ (God, Bk X, ll. 104-5)

Irony and Imagery

• Irony: ‘Courageous chief’ (Raphael, Bk IV, l. 920)

• Metaphor: ‘O sacred, wise and wisdom-giving plant’ (Satan, Bk IX, l. 679)

• Personification: ‘that this new comer, Shame,/ There sit not, and reproach us as unclean’ (Adam, Bk IX, ll. 1097-8)

• Simile: ‘I led her blushing like the Morn:’ (Adam, Bk VIII, l. 511)

• Metonymy: ‘to alarm,/ Though inaccessible, his fatal throne’ (Moloch, Bk II, ll. 103-4)

• Synecdoche: ‘till younger hands ere long/ Assist us’ (Adam, Bk IX, ll. 246-7)