A literary trope is an artistic effect realized with figurative language — word, phrase, image — such as a rhetorical figure . In editorial practice, a trope is "a substitution of a word or phrase by a less literal word or phrase". Semantic change has expanded the definition of the literary term trope to also describe a writer's usage of commonly recurring an overused literary techniques and rhetorical devices (characters and situations) motifs , and clichés in a work of creative literature.
7-682: The Dolorous Stroke is a trope in Arthurian legend and some other stories of Celtic origin. In its fullest form, it concerns the Fisher King ( King Pellehan or Anfortas ), the guardian of the Holy Grail , who falls into sin and consequently suffers a wound from a mystical weapon (often the Spear of Destiny from Christian eschatology ). He becomes the Maimed King, and his kingdom suffers similarly, becoming
14-467: A change', related to the root of the verb τρέπειν ( trepein ), 'to turn, to direct, to alter, to change'; this means that the term is used metaphorically to denote, among other things, metaphorical language. Tropes and their classification were an important field in classical rhetoric . The study of tropes has been taken up again in modern criticism, especially in deconstruction . Tropological criticism (not to be confused with tropological reading ,
21-521: A list of labels for these poetic devices. These include For a longer list, see Figure of speech: Tropes . Kenneth Burke has called metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche and irony the "four master tropes" owing to their frequency in everyday discourse. These tropes can be used to represent common recurring themes throughout creative works, and in a modern setting relationships and character interactions. It can also be used to denote examples of common repeating figures of speech and situations. Whilst most of
28-605: A trope is the Quem quaeritis? , an amplification before the Introit of the Easter Sunday service and the source for liturgical drama . This particular practice came to an end with the Tridentine Mass , the unification of the liturgy in 1570 promulgated by Pope Pius V . Rhetoricians have analyzed a variety of "twists and turns" used in poetry and literature and have provided
35-569: A type of biblical exegesis ) is the historical study of tropes, which aims to "define the dominant tropes of an epoch" and to "find those tropes in literary and non-literary texts", an interdisciplinary investigation of which Michel Foucault was an "important exemplar". A specialized use is the medieval amplification 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
42-638: The Wasteland : neither will be healed until the successful completion of the Grail Quest . The stroke is usually described as being to the king's thighs: this has been taken as a euphemism for the genitals , which are explicitly stated to be the location of Anfortas's wound in Wolfram von Eschenbach 's Parzival . In the Post-Vulgate Cycle , Thomas Malory 's Le Morte d'Arthur , and later works based on them,
49-454: The stroke is delivered by Sir Balin . He ignores an "unearthly voice" warning him off, strikes the king when he is deprived of his weapon, and thinks that the stroke is justified. This article relating to a Celtic myth or legend is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Trope (literature) The term trope derives from the Greek τρόπος ( tropos ), 'a turn,
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