Trope (literature)

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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.

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. 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].

[edit] References

  1. ^ 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

[edit] See also