Poetic and Literary Tropes
A trope is a figure of speech—certain language constructs present figures to the eye, the ear, to the other senses. A trope makes a picture or a sensation—it is descriptive in nature.
But not all descriptions are tropes, for a figure of speech is more complex than simple adjective-noun (pretty girl) or verb-adverb (run quickly) constructions.
Many of those who are newly come to poetry don’t understand that heightened language uses few modifiers, but many tropes. As a result, new writers tend to fill up lines with adjectives, adverbs, and other modifiers through descriptions, rather than with the better use of literary tropes.
Descriptions—Omiosis is description by similarity: Two things in some way resemble each other.
Simile: is the comparison of things that have points of likeness (Her smile was like the sun, / As warm as morning light upon the rose).
Analogy: is the means by which simile proceeds: comparison of things that are not identical (He stood as if he were an oak / Braced against the wind.)
Contrast: is comparison by differentiation: Things are not alike (The lake was no more mirror than the sky is a pancake.)
Allusion: is comparison by reference to something outside the text, or to something not organically part of the text; i.e., "He came, like Rome, to see, and stayed to conquer."
Hypotiposis: is the description of real things.
Pragmatographia: is description of actions.
Topographia: is description of real places.
Chronographia: is description of seasons, times of day, and so forth.
Icon: is resemblance by portraiture: i.e., one person looks like another.
Prosopographia: is description of a person one has never known; imaginative portraiture.
Paradigma: is description by comparison of two similar cases or situations.
Enigma: is deliberately obscure description, as in a riddle.
Parabola: is resemblance by imagery—talking about one thing in terms of something entirely different in kind.
An Epithetic Compound: is two descriptive words made into one; i.e., "deathgush," "thickdark," "sunbright," and so forth. One form of the epithetic compound is the portmanteau word, and another is the kenning.
An Oxymoron: is a descriptive phrase that combines terms that seem mutually exclusive, but which in context may not be so; i.e., "sweet bitterness," "terrible beauty," "burning chill," and so forth.
No matter how much one modifies a substantive or verb, however, it will remain essentially the same. How does one change a word essentially?—he makes it equivalent to something else; he makes a metaphor of it: The sun and moon are coins to be spent lightly, or in dark ways.
The nature of allegory lies in speaking about one subject in terms of another, in order to make it new again, to make it cleaner and sharper; and the heart of allegory is metaphor. The essence of metaphor lies in language equation, or, as in the example above, sun + moon = coins.
A metaphor that is extended beyond the original equation is the conceit (an old-fashioned way of saying "concept"), as in everything that follows the example’s equation to be spent (like money, like time) lightly (a pun, meaning "in a carefree way" or "without much thought," at the same time that it continues the metaphor of sunlight or daylight) or in dark ways (again, in ways that are hopeless or despairing, perhaps, at the same time that nighttime is invoked.)
Metaphoric Tropes—Metaphoric Construction: The vehicle of a metaphor is the trope that bears the weight of the comparison of dissimilar things or qualites that hve a single point in common (Coins is the vehicle of our example; roundness is the point in common between coins and sun & moon). The subject of a metaphor is called the tenor (sun & moon is the compound tenor of the example).
An Abstraction: is any term which is open to broad and various definition; e.g., soul, truth, beauty, justice, God, love.
A Concretion: is any term that may be conventionally defined: e.g., table, brick, rug, tree, elephant, house.
An Anchored Abstraction: is an abstraction metaphorized by its being equated with a concretion: "Her soul is a brick."
An Unanchored Abstraction: is an abstraction which has been equated with another abstraction: Keats’s "Beauty is truth, truth beauty" is an unanchored abstraction. It means nothing—or, rather, it may mean anything the reader wished it to mean. It is not a metaphor because there is no obvious (or even discernible) point in common between the two abstractions, and there is no way to tell which abstraction is the vehicle and which is the tenor.
Denotation: is the primary meaning, or dictionary definition of a word—Heart: "A bodily organ, the purpose of which is to circulate the blood."
Connotation: is an ancillary or second meaning of a word. Connotations of heart are courage, as in "he has great heart"; love, as in "An affair of the heart": and essence, as in "He is pure of heart."
Context: is the environment surrounding a word situated in a phrase, clause, or larger grammatic unit. This environment limits the denotations and connotations of the word. In "His heart beat strongly in battle," the context of the word heart allows the denotation a bodily organ and the connotation of courage, but eliminates the other connotations of love and essence.
Overtone: is this allowance of connotations by context. In The sun and moon are coins to be spent lightly, or in dark ways, context allows the denotation of carefreeness in lightly, as well as the connotation of brightness through overtone.
Catachresis: is a term that implies misuse of tropes. Every poem must make sense—not necessarily logical sense, but poetic sense—in context. If a metaphor or other trope simply makes no "sense" of any kind—as for instance, when the context does not block out enough connotations and there is confusion about what a word means (it may mean too many things, at which point ambiguity becomes obscurity), then the trope is catachretic.
A Subdued Metaphor: is one that is implied, not stated, by the context. For instance, in "The sun and moon are coins to be spent lightly, or in dark ways," the metaphor of gold is implied in context by coins in relation to sun, and the metaphor of silver is implied in relation to moon.
A Diminished Metaphor: has a deliberately overintense or overstated tenor in relation to its vehicle: "The burning moon that she remembers / Was but a brand of dying embers."
Dyfalu: a Welsh term, describes a tenor that bursts into a profusion of vehicles: "The moon was a coin, a ring of fire, / A cartwheel rolling across the sky, / A heaven full of lightning turning / Around the earth—a cosmic pyre"—in other words, a catalog vehicle.
An Organic Metaphor: is one that rises logically from the context.
A Gratuitous Metaphor: is one that does not rise logically from the context.
A Mixed Metaphor: is catachretic because its vehicle is inappropriate to the tenor (the sun and moon are baby buggies), or the vehicle itself is made up of inappropriate elements (Keep your nose to the grindstone, your shoulder to the wheel, and an eye peeled for trouble").
A Conceit: is a metaphor that is extended beyond the original tenor-vehicle, always logically in context, each new element of the extended metaphor retaining its base in the point of similarity between the original, otherwise disparate, equated things or qualities.
Synesthesia: is talking bout one of the senses in terms of another—"The afternoon smelled green" (scent-sight), "I could taste her sweet whispers" (taste-hearing), "He touched me with his mind" (touch-thought).
Prosopopeia: is personification, speaking of non-human things in human terms.
The Pathetic Fallacy: is absurd or overstated personification—endowing non-human things with bathetic or pathetic qualities, often through cue-words (such as apple-pie, motherhood, etc.) which are meant to induce automatic sentimental responses in the reader. In the phrase, "The little white cloud that cried," little, cloud, and cried are cue-words.
A Symbol: is a concretion which represents an abstraction; i.e., in some context the ocean might be symbolic of eternity.
An Emblem: is a conventional symbol; i.e., a bald eagle is emblematic of the United States of America.
Paradox: is a metaphor or statement that combines terms which seem mutually exclusive, but which in fact are not—"Freedom is the prison of rebellion," or "Winter is the Spring of contemplation"; or it is a statement that contradicts a commonly held belief—"The earth is not round, it is egg-shaped."
Metaphysical Poetry: is poetry whose organizing principle is the conceit. It may extend metaphor using all of the various techniques of descriptions and of metaphorical and rhetorical tropes.
Allegory: "a long and perpetual metaphor." It is a method of telling a story on the narrative level, but meaning something more general regarding the human condition on the symbolic level.
Rhetorical Tropes—Rhetoric: is the art of effective speaking and writing; it is concerned with creating an effect in the listener or reader, and with affecting him/her as well. Certain tropes may be called rhetorical tropes because they are concerned with making there effects through non-metaphorical figures of speech.
Anachinosis: refers the reader, in an argument, to his own opinion.
Antenagoge: makes a statement and then softens it by adding a mitigating or less harsh alternative: "I wish, my dear, that you’d fall over dead-- / Well, maybe just fall down and hit your head."
Antiphrasis: is derision by means of simple contradiction; i.e., calling a fat man "skinny," or a thin man "fatso."
Antipophora: is asking a question, and then answering it oneself.
Antitheton: is the term describing the techniques of "the devil’s advocate" in argument: Taking any position and defending it simply in joy of the fight, or in order to bring out some point that might otherwise remain unexamined.
Aporia: expresses doubt or uncertainty or a logical gap.
Apostrophe: is direct address—speaking to an absent human being, or to a (usually) personified thing or abstraction.
Ateismus: is simple jesting, without rancor: "Did Samson Agonistes have the strength / of twenty bulls at cowtime in the spring?"
Charientismus: is light banter which is meant to sooth rancor, as for instance, in trying to avoid a fight with a loud bully one might say, "I’m sure you’re too much of a gentleman to want to pick a fight."
Dialisis: sets up the propositions of an argument. These propositions are a dilemma, in that they seem mutually exclusive: It must be one or the other proposition, but which is it? Perhaps it is neither, or both: Dialisis disposes of both propositions without paradox.
Dramatic Irony: what appears true to a character is not what the audience or reader knows to be true; for example, Duncan’s belief that the Macbeths are praiseworthy hosts creates irony because we know that the Macbeths are planning to kill Duncan. Thus, with dramatic irony the audience knows more about a character’s situation than the character does, foreseeing an outcome contrary to the character’s expectation, and thereby giving a sharply different sense to some of the character’s own statements; in tragedies, this is called "tragic irony."
Ecphonisis: is exclamation or outcry.
Epithonema: is climactic summation at the conclusion of a poem, a coda, often in a single line or couplet.
Epitropis: is used when the speaker believes he has said enough and refers the reader to something else in order to complete the thought: "I’ve said enough. Time for another beer. / You take these definitions on from here."
Erotema: is the rhetorical question—a question for which no answer is given or expected because, in context, the answer is obvious.
Etiologia: is the argumentative technique of assigning a cause or reason for an action or circumstance.
Ironia, or irony, is witty mockery, usually effected by saying the opposite of what is actually meant.
Meiosis: is a method of irony or sarcasm that diminishes the importance of something, as in, "He’s a big man indeed—big-headed, and big-bellied."
Metanoia: makes a statement, then retracts it by substituting something else. It is a radical change, conversion, or metamorphosis of thought, feeling, or action.
Micterismus: is verbal sneering.
Noema: is an ironic way of speaking by saying one thing on the surface, but meaning something quite different.
Orismus: gives a definition which is different from someone else’s definition of a word or phrase, as in the first stanza of "Fit the Sixth": "The school’s a madhouse? Nay, / a bedroom maybe…."
Paralepsis: makes a little thing of something by passing over it lightly, or denying it is of importance and thereby emphasizing its actual importance through understatement.
Paramalogia: is "the figure of admittance." It admits arguments to the contrary, so as to undercut the opponent’s case.
Parimia: is the trope of speaking by means of proverbs.
Parisia: is an apology by the writer of scurrilous or licentious material.
Procatalepsis: pre-empts opposing arguments by anticipating the argument before the opponent can articulate it.
Sarcasmus: or sarcasm, is heavy verbal irony, or "the bitter taunt." There is little wit in sarcasm, as for instance when one bridge partner says to the other, who has just played a bad hand, "Oh, you’re just a terrific player, simply marvelous." In this case, saying the opposite of what is actually meant is similar to the technique of irony, but the emphasis is on the bitterness, not on the mockery.
Situational Irony: what appears likely to happen is not what actually happens.
Structural Irony: involves the use of a naïve or deluded hero or unreliable narrator, whose view of the world differs widely from the true circumstances recognized by the author and readers. This irony thus flatters its reader's/audience’s intelligence at the expense of a character (or fictional narrator). A similar sense of audience/reader’s detached superiority is achieved by dramatic irony.
Tapinosis: is saying too little of a subject; undersaying. It is not the same, however, as understatement. The heart of poetry is saying just enough, an frequently a poet can say more by merely showing the situation—letting it speak for itself—rather than telling the reader how to feel about it.
Verbal Irony: words that appear to mean one thing really mean the opposite. The opening sentence of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice (1813) is a famous example: "It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife" (part of the ironic implication is that a single woman is in want of a rich husband). In its lowliest form, verbal irony is sarcasmus.
Source: Turco, Lewis. Poetry: An Introduction Through Writing. Reston, VA: Reston Publishing Company, Inc., 1973.