Tropes

Crowley and Hawhee

Sharon Crowley and Debra Hawhee explain tropes in Ancient Rhetorics for Contemporary Students "the last, and most important, of the excellences of style," (Crowley, and Hawhee 235) the section on ornament. In this segment they discuss how ancient rhetoricians divided the style of ornament into three categories: figures of speech, figures of thought, and tropes.

Crowley and Hawhee's tropes include

• Onomatopoeia
• Antonomasia
• Metonymy
• Synechdoche
• Periphrasis
• Hyperbaton
• Hyperbole
• Catechresis
• Metaphor
• Allegory

There are many, many other tropes, such as zeugma, synæsthesia, litotes, erotema, apostrophe, and simile, and although writers often use these and notice their effects in other texts, the names of these tropes are nowadays regarded as highly specialized.

Tropes comes from the Greek word tropi which means to turn. A trope is "any substitution of one word or phrase for another," (Crowley, and Hawhee 236) and transfers the usual meaning of the word or phrase to something else. Each trope's substitutive logic indicates that there are always stylistic alternatives where tropes enter into play.

Examples of Tropes

"This is a kind of impertinence up with which I will not put."  -Winston Church Hill

"My love is like a red, red rose."  -Robert Burns

Work Cited

Crowley, Sharon, and Debra Hawhee. Ancient Rhetorics for Contemporary Students. 3rd ed. New York, NY: Longman, 2003. 235-236. Print.