Trope (literature) - Citizendia

For other uses, see Trope (disambiguation).

A literary trope (from Greek τροπή - tropē, "a turn, a change" and that from τρέπω - trepō, "to turn, to direct, to alter, to change") is a common pattern, theme, motif in literature, or a term often used to denote figures of speech in which words are used in a sense different from their literal meaning. Greek (el ελληνική γλώσσα or simply el ελληνικά — "Hellenic" is an Indo-European language, spoken today by 15-22 million people mainly A theme, from Old French tesme, is a broad idea in a story or literary work or a message or lesson conveyed by a written text In a Narrative, such as a novel or a film motifs are recurring structures contrasts or literary devices that can help to develop and inform the text’s major themes A figure of speech, sometimes

Rhetoricians have closely analyzed the bewlidering array of "turns and twists" used in poetry and literature and have provided a sometimes confusing list of labels for these poetic devices:

Various scholars throughout history, beginning with Quintilian, Ramus, and Vico, have argued that a great deal of our conceptualization of experience, even the foundation of human consciousness, is based figurative schemes of thought which include not only metaphor, but also metonymy, synecdoche and irony. Rhetoric has had many definitions no simple definition can do it justice Metaphor (from the Greek: μεταφορά - metaphora, meaning "transfer" is language that directly compares seemingly unrelated subjects In Rhetoric, metonymy (mɨˈtɒnɨmi is the use of a word for a concept or object associated with the concept/object originally denoted by the word Irony is a literary or Rhetorical device, in which there is an incongruity or Discordance between what one says or does and what one means or Hyperbole (haɪˈpɝːbəli hye-PER-buh-lee; "HYE-per-bowl" is a mispronunciation comes from Greek "υπερβολή" (meaning exaggeration and is a In Rhetoric, litotes is a Figure of speech in which rather than making a certain statement directly a speaker expresses it even more effectively or achieves emphasis In Linguistics, periphrasis is a device by which a grammatical category or relationship is expressed by a Free morpheme (typically one or more Function Antithesis ( Greek for "setting opposite" from against + position) is a counter- Propositions and denotes a direct Contrast Marcus Fabius Quintilianus (ca 35 – ca 100 was a Roman Rhetorician from Hispania, widely referred to in medieval schools of rhetoric and Petrus Ramus, or Pierre de la Ramée (1515 &ndash August 26, 1572) French humanist, Logician, and educational reformer Giambattista Vico, Giambattista Vigo or Giovanni Battista Vico ( June 23, 1668 – January 23, 1744) was an Italian In Rhetoric, metonymy (mɨˈtɒnɨmi is the use of a word for a concept or object associated with the concept/object originally denoted by the word Synecdoche is taken from Greek sinekdohi (συνεκδοχή meaning "simultaneous understanding" (si-nek-duh-kee (pronounced /sɪˈnɛkdoˌki/ Irony is a literary or Rhetorical device, in which there is an incongruity or Discordance between what one says or does and what one means or Tropes do not merely provide a way for us to talk about how we think, reason, and imagine, they are also consitutive of our experience^[1].

References

^ Gibbs, Raymond W. Jr. : Process and products in making sense of tropes from : Metaphor and Thought (Ortony, Andrew (Editor), Cambridge University Press, 1993), page 252

References

See also