Figure as narrative structure
Figure 1. Synecdoche (a kind of metonymy) 2. Metalepsis (a kind of metonymy) 3. Hypotyposis
Jacobson, the Group Mu, Barthes, Genette, Todorov Revival of Rhetoric: 60s (structuralism) evolution of classical rhetoric: dialectic, stylistics (restricted rhetoric, to a theory of figures) 1960s: the upturn of rhetoric (Henri Morier’s Dictionnaire de poétique et de rhétorique, 1961) 1970, Gérard Genette characterized a paradoxical method: founding a ‘generalist’ project on a rhetoric reduced to mere elocutio, further reduced to the theory of figure
Gérard Genette: de la figure à la fiction (from figure to fiction) Pierre Fontanier: Le Manuel classique pour l’étude des tropes, ou Element de la science du sens des mots (1821); Le Traité général des figures du discours autres que les tropes (1827) Gérard Genette titles him the “Linnaeus of rhetoric” and re-published Fontanier’s above two treatises, titled as Les Figures du discours, 1977 Narrative theory: Figure I (1966) – Figure V (2002) Métalepse, 2004
Fontanier’s figures The Figures of Discourse Figures: Tropes (figures of signification) and other types of figures
Figure and trope clarification Figure: modify the ordinary language to make it more expressive Figures are syntactic (later also semantic) in function. They represent symmetries or unexpected plays on the order of words in a clause or group of clauses. Image, rationale, number Trope: derives from the Greek tropos: “turn, direction, way”, from the verb trepein: “to turn, to direct, to alter, to change” can be word, phrase, image Tropes are semantic in function
After Fontanier: figures
Figures de style (Axelle Beth, Elsa Marpeau) Figures of words Figures of meanings (metalepsis, metonymy, synecdoche, metaphor…) Figures of construction (chiasmus, mise en abyme…) Figures of thought (hypotyposis, analepsis, prolepsis…)
Figures of style (Henri Suhamy) tropes (metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche…) Figures of repetition and amplification Figures of construction (chiasmus, oxymoron…) Figures of setting-off (hypotyposis…) Ellipsis Figures of thought
Roman Jakobson: metaphor and metonymy 1963, Essais de linguistique générale “Deux aspects du langage et deux types d’aphasies” (1956) which defines language as “a bipolar structure” organised by “les pôles métaphorique et métonymique” (p. 61) Metaphor: paradigm of morphemes (similarity) Metonymy: syntagm (contiguity)
Metonymy (synecdoche, metalepsis) Greek: “change of name” The substitution of the name of an attribute or adjunct for that of the thing meant e.g. the scepter, crown for power, sovereignty Wall Street for American film industry The pen is mightier than the sword. The White House is concerned about terrorism.
Roland Barthes: figure and text Text: a material of figures Text: interpreted through the etymologising metaphor of texte-tissu (textum: tisser)
Synecdoche Definition: a part is made to represent the whole or vice versa, as in “He is the breadwinner”, “France won a gold medal” Todorov and synecdoche as the fundamental figure Metaphor: a double synecdoche Metonymy: also a double synecdoche more a logic than a poetics (Todorov: mathematic, abstract) Synecdoche: from figure to fiction Narrative examples: Gogol’s The Nose Andersen’s The Shadow
Metalepsis Figure of style: take the cause for consequence/effect; what precedes for what follows, vice versa (Fontanier, Du Marsais, Quintilien) e.g. “Was this the face that launched a thousand ships and burnt the topless towers of Ilium?” “Nous le pleurons” pour “ils sont morts” (from effect to cause) “Ils ont vécu” pour “Ils sont morts” (antecedent for consequence)
Genette and metalepsis according to Genette’s modern definition (Métalepse, Paris, 2004, pp. 13–27): The rhetorical device of metalepsis can be employed to effect transgression on three different levels: 1. the author and his product 2. the diegetic story and the hypodiegetic story 3. the reader and the work from figure to fiction: fantastic genre Julio Cortázar’s “Continuity of Parks” Myst 1993; Myst III Exile 2001; Myst IV: Revelation 2005 (adventure, mystery) 3. Hypotyposis (metalepsis: the figurative turns literal) Pierre Fontanier: “figures de style par imitation” “hypotyposis paints things in so lively and energetic a manner that it presents them right before one’s eyes, and turns a narrative or a description into an image, a painting or even a live scene” e.g. film, book fantasy (Inkheart, The Neverending Story)
