Trope (literature)

A literary trope is the use of figurative language, via word, phrase or an image, for artistic effect such as using a figure of speech. The word "trope" has also come to be used for describing commonly recurring literary and rhetorical devices, motifs or clichés in creative works.
Origins.
The term "trope" derives from the Greek ("tropos"), "turn, direction, way", derived from the verb τρέπειν ("trepein"), "to turn, to direct, to alter, to change". 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, 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".
In medieval writing.
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 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.
In Victorian writing.
Weaving is a literary trope that in the works of Victorian women authors symbolized a subversive femininity as a mode of self-expression for women, who were traditionally expected to remain silent in matters of public concern.
Types and examples.
Rhetoricians have analyzed a variety of "twists and turns" used in poetry and literature and have provided 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.
Whilst most of the various forms of phrasing described above are in common usage, most of the terms themselves are not, in particular antanaclasis, litotes, metonymy, synecdoche and catachresis.