Accumulation
Figures of speechAn abundant enumeration of terms of the same kind, producing an effect of profusion, vertigo or saturation.
Example
A drawer opened: keys, tickets, dead batteries, a watch, three coins, a folded letter.
Accumulation lines up a series of words with the same function — nouns, adjectives, verbs — without necessarily ranking them: it aims for a mass effect. The sentence overflows, and that overflow is the meaning: a market's profusion, a battle's chaos, a life's inventory.
Rabelais made it a comic art, Perec an art of the inventory. Accumulation can saturate to dazzle or to exhaust — a list of abandoned objects conveys departure better than a page of analysis. Selection and order remain decisive: a successful accumulation is a list that looks unordered and isn't.
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