Rewards

Chocolate reward to the first person commenting on this post who can tell me what 'prolepsis' is and give me an example from Birdsong.

Amiens Water Gardens

The first section of the novel which I found particularly apposite to the course we're studying is the day that Stephen visits the water gardens with the Azaire family and M and Mme Berard. The descriptions of vegetable decay, and the high water table of this area foreshadow (obviously even more so as we are a retrospective audience) the mud and decomposing flesh encountered by the men in the trenches in the main sections of the novel.
'formed by the backwaters of the Somme'
'He was repelled by the water gardens'
'Heavy flies hung over the water'
'stagnation of living tissue which could not be saved from decay'
'the rotting of matter into the turned and dug earth with its humid, clinging soil'

Stephen seems to be preoccupied with death and decomposition:
'Berard's tongue would decompose into the specks of friable soil'
'Little Gregoire and Lisette would be the mud of the banks in which the rats burrowed'

Key terms
Foreshadowing
Prolepsis
Dramatic irony?