Entertainment / Literature / Hysteron-Proteron: Using anastrophe in a way that creates a catachresis (see under tropes), an impossible ordering on the literal level. For instance, Virgil has the despairing Trojans in the Aeneid cry out in despair as the city falls, 'Let us die, and rush into the heart of the fight.' Of course, the expected, possible order would be to 'rush into the heart of the fight,' and then 'die.' Literally, Virgil's sequence would be impossible unless all the troops died, then rose up as zombies and ran off to fight. In Antony and Cleopatra, Shakespeare writes, 'I can behold no longer / Th'Antoniad, the Egyptian admiral, / With all their sixty, fly and turn the rudder' (3.10.1). We would expect to turn the rudder and then flee, not flee and then turn the rudder! See also anastrophe and catachresis.
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