Trope (literature)

A literary trope is the use of gurative language via

word, phrase, or even an image for artistic eect[1]
such as using a gure of speech. The word trope has
also come to be used for describing commonly recurring
literary and rhetorical devices,[2] motifs or clichs in creative works.[3][4]

Irony creating a trope through implying the opposite of the standard meaning, such as describing a
bad situation as good times.

Metonymy a trope through proximity or correspondence. For example, referring to actions of the
U.S. President as actions of the White House.

Metaphor an explanation of an object or idea

through juxtaposition of disparate things with a similar characteristic, such as describing a courageous
person as having a heart of a lion.

Origins

The term trope derives from the Greek (tropos),

turn, direction, way, derived from the verb
(trepein), to turn, to direct, to alter, to change.[3] Tropes
and their classication were an important eld in classical
rhetoric. The study of tropes has been taken up again in
modern criticism, especially in deconstruction.[5] Tropological criticism (not to be confused with tropological
reading, a type of biblical exegesis) is the historical study
of tropes, which aims to dene the dominant tropes of
an epoch and to nd those tropes in literary and nonliterary texts, an interdisciplinary investigation of which
Michel Foucault was an important exemplar.[5]

Synecdoche related to metonymy and metaphor,

creates a play on words by referring to something
with a related concept: for example, referring to the
whole with the name of a part, such as hired hands
for workers; a part with the name of the whole, such
as the law for police ocers; the general with the
specic, such as bread for food; the specic with
the general, such as cat for a lion; or an object
with the material it is made from, such as bricks
and mortar for a building.
Kenneth Burke has called metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche and irony the four master tropes.[7]

In medieval writing

A specialized use is the medieval amplication of texts

from the liturgy, such as in the Kyrie Eleison (Kyrie, /
magnae Deus potentia, / liberator hominis, / transgressoris
mandati, / eleison). The most important example of such
a trope is the Quem quaeritis?, an amplication before
the Introit of the Easter Sunday service and the source
for liturgical drama.[2][6] This particular practice came to
an end with the Tridentine Mass, the unication of the
liturgy in 1570 promulgated by Pope Pius V.[5]

4 Examples
Rhetoricians have closely analyzed the great variety of
twists and turns used in poetry and literature and have
provided an extensive list of precise labels for these poetic devices. Examples include:
hyperbole
irony

Types

litotes
metaphor

Allegory A sustained metaphor continued through

whole sentences or even through a whole discourse.
For example: The ship of state has sailed through
rougher storms than the tempest of these lobbyists.

metonymy
oxymoron

Antanaclasis is the stylistic trope of repeating a

synecdoche
single word, but with a dierent meaning each time.
Antanaclasis is a common type of pun, and like other
kinds of pun, it is often found in slogans.
For a longer list, see Figure of speech: Tropes.
1

See also
Fantasy tropes and conventions
Invariance principle
Literary topos
Scheme (linguistics)
Stereotype
Tropological reading
TV Tropes, a site dedicated to cataloguing and
studying clich

References and sources

References
[1] Miller (1990). Tropes, Parables, and Performatives. Duke
University Press. p. 9. ISBN 0822311119.
[2] Cuddon, J. A.; Preston, C. E. (1998). Trope. The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory (4
ed.). London: Penguin. p. 948. ISBN 9780140513639.
[3] trope, Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, Springeld,
Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster, 2009, retrieved 200910-16
[4] trope (revised entry)". Oxford English Dictionary.
Oxford University Press. 2014.
[5] Childers, Joseph; Hentzi, Gary (1995). Trope. The
Columbia Dictionary of Modern Literary and Cultural
Criticism. New York: Columbia UP. p. 309. ISBN
9780231072434.
[6] Cuddon, J. A.; Preston, C. E. (1998). Quem quaeritis
trope. The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory (4 ed.). London: Penguin. p. 721. ISBN
9780140513639.
[7] Burke, K. (1969). A grammar of motives. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Sources
Silva Rhetorica. rhetoric.byu.edu.

REFERENCES AND SOURCES

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