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A trope is a Rhetorical Figure Of Speech that consists of a play on words, i.e. using a word in a way other than what is considered its literal or normal form. The other major category of figures of speech is the Scheme , which involves changing the ''pattern'' of words in a sentence. LINGUISTIC USAGE Trope comes from the Greek word, ''tropos'', which means a "turn", as in ''heliotrope'', a flower which turns toward the sun. We can imagine a trope as a way of turning a word away from its normal meaning, or turning it into something else. A number of tropes have been identified, among them:
(For a more comprehensive listing, see Figure Of Speech ) LITERARY USAGE In literature, a trope is a familiar and repeated symbol, Meme , Theme , Motif , style, character or thing that permeates a particular type of literature. They are usually tied heavily to Genre . For example, tropes in Horror literature and film include the mad scientist or a dark and stormy night. Tropes can also be plots or events, such as the Science Fiction trope of an alien invasion that is deterred at the last minute. Authors that rely on tropes as the starting points for their writing are often seen as unimaginative and dull. However, many authors have twisted tropes into new forms to great success. Stephen King has been noteworthy for taking older horror tropes and reworking them into the modern world to great effect. Tropes may also serve as guides for writers trying to strengthen the overall effectiveness of their work (i.e., asking such questions as: what trope am I working with in this poem/story?). A wiki collecting tropes used in television is available at TV Tropes Wiki . TROPES IN PHILOSOPHY In Philosophy of history The use of tropes has been extended from a linguistic usage to the field of Philosophy Of History by, among other theoricists, Hayden White in his ''Metahistory'' (1973). Tropes are generally understood to be styles of discourse - rather than figures of style - underlying the historian's writing of history. They are historically determined in as much as the Historiography of every period is defined by a specific type of trope. For , Metaphor , Synecdoche and, finally, Irony . Trope theory in metaphysics Trope theory in metaphysics is a flavor of Nominalism . Here, a trope is a particular instance of a property, like the specific redness of a rose. This use of the term goes back to D. C. Williams (1953). TROPES IN MUSIC In Jewish religious liturgy The marks, also called trope or ''te'amim'' in Hebrew. It is generally believed that the Hebrew trope originally represented individual musical notes, the pitches of which are long forgotten. Over time, each trope has come to stand for a specific musical phrase. Different traditions, e.g., Persian, Yemenite, use different melodies. Also, although the written trope symbols are the same, different musical phrases are used for text in the Torah (the first five books of the Bible ) and the Haftorah , excerpts from other parts of the Tanakh , such as the book of Isaiah . In Medieval music In the Medieval era, troping was an important compositional technique. There were two basic types of tropes: textual and musical. A textual trope involved the assigning of a new text to an existing musical melisma. A musical trope was the insertion of new notes into a piece of music, creating or extending a melisma. In 20th-century music In serial music, a trope is an unordered collection of six different pitches, what is now called an unordered Hexachord , of which there are two ( Complementary ones) in twelve tone Equal Temperament . Tropes were used by Josef Matthias Hauer in his Twelve-tone Technique developed simultaneously but overshadowed by Arnold Schoenberg 's. SEE ALSO |
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