Schemes and Tropes

Stylistics 551Lecture 23

Foregrounding

Parallelism • Schemes (form/shape)

Figures involving repetition Eg. Alliteration, anaphora

Deviation• Tropes• (turn/change)

• Figures involving semantic irregularities • Eg. Pun, metaphor

Schemes and Tropes

Schemes: foregrounded repetitions of expression.Tropes: foregrounded irregularities of content. • Schemes: The word scheme has been derived form

the Greek word “Schema” meaning ‘form’ or ‘shape’.

• Schemes roughly have included figures such as alliteration, anaphora, and chiasmus and have been described as abnormal arrangements leading themselves to the forceful and harmonious presentation of ideas. • Schemes may be identified as Phonological or

formal (i.e. grammatical, lexical pattern)

Types of Repetition

• Repetition can be of two types:• 1. Repetition of Sounds i) alliteration ii) assonance iii) consonance• 2. Repetition of Words i) anaphora (a…) (a…) ii) apanalepsis (a…a) (b…b) iii) epistrophe (…a) (…a) iv) symploce (a…b) (a…b)

Topes

• The word Trope has been derived form the Greet word Tropein, meaning to turn or change. It involves changing or modifying the general meaning of a term. • And example of a trope is irony. Which is used in a

way that conveys a meaning opposite to is usual or apparent meaning.

• Tropes are figures of speech that result in a change of meaning. It is an artful deviation form the ordinary or principal , significance of a word. • A term which alters the literal sense of a word or

phrase. So metaphor, simile, pun are all tropes. • In the rhetorical tradition tropes are constructed

with figures which are rhetorical devices which affect the order or placing of words.

Kinds of Tropes • Semantic inversions. • Reference to one thing as another• Wordplay and puns• Substitutions• Overstatement and Understatement

Figures Involving Semantic Irregularities• In literary language especially poetry we have a

unique kind of patterning of language. We have two types of meaning in general. One is the literal meaning an other is the nonliteral meaning. Literature is highly suggestive and interpretable. It is up to one’s perception that how he perceives the thing. When we talk about semantic oddity it means something irrational. • e.g. “water has eaten kindness”

• 1. Oxymoron: • An oxymoron is a figure of that creates semantic

irregularity. In it contradictory terms are combined to create new meaning. Oxymoron is a useful device to convey the absurdity or oddity of some idea or a thing.• E.g. “darkness visible” “echoing silence” “burning

ice” “cold fire” “living dead”

1. Oxymoron

• It is a rhetorical figure in which an epigrammatic effect is created by the conjunction of incongruous or contradictory terms. In simple words it is the joining of two opposite or contradictory terms or ideas. It condenses a paradoxical statement or idea and often has an ironic overtone.

Oxymoron

• Observe the combination of contradictory terms such as used by Romeo in Act 1, scene 1 in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet

Why then, O brawling love! O loving hate O heavy lightness, serious vanity;

2. Paradox

• A situation or a statement that seems to contradict itself, but on a closer inspection it seems true and believable. • These lines form John Donne’s Holly Sonnet proved

and example “That I may rise, and stand, o’erthrow me”The poet paradoxically asks God to knock him down so that he may stand . He want his present self to be destroyed by God so that He may remake him as a holier person.

• Take me to you, imprison me, for I• Except You, enthrall me, never shall be free• Nor chaste, except you ravish me

(John Donne)

3. Antithesis

• Antithesis is a figure of speech involving a seeming contradiction of ideas, words, clauses or sentences within balanced grammatical structure. Parallelism of expression serves to emphasize opposition of ideas. A seeming contradiction of ideas, words, clauses, or sentences creating a parallelism that serves to emphasize opposition of ideas.

• To err is human, to forgive divine.• And the profit and loss are current undersea. • We who are living are dying• He raised a mortal to the sky She drew an angel down