Tropes and their functions in a work of fiction. Tropes: Finding and Analyzing Tropes

An integral part of any literary work are They are able to make the text unique and individually authored. In literary criticism, such devices are called tropes. You can learn more about what trails are by reading this article.

Fiction could not exist without various figures of speech, which give works a special style. Any author, be it a poet or a prose writer, constantly uses tropes that help convey his own thoughts and emotions that he wants to express in his creation. It is the large number of tropes that distinguish them from other types of author’s texts. So, let's talk in more detail about the means of speech expressiveness themselves: what they are, what types exist, which of them are most often used, what their functions and features are.

Let's find out what trails are. Tropes are those that make the text more expressive and lexically diverse. There are many types of these means: metaphor, metonymy, personification, hyperbole, synecdoche, parcellation, litotes, epithet, comparison and others. Let's discuss these paths in more detail. There really are a lot of them in the Russian language, so some scientists tried to identify several of these means of expression from which all the others originated. Thus, after a series of studies, it was found that the “main” tropes are metaphor and metonymy. However, there is no unified classification of means of speech expression, since scientists have not been able to determine a single trope from which all the others were derived.

Let us explain the meaning of the tropes listed above.

A metaphor is a hidden comparison, a figure of speech that helps to compare several objects with each other without the help of words “like”, “the same as”, “similar to something” and so on.

Metonymy is the substitution of one word for another according to the principle of “contiguity”.

Personification is the attribution of human qualities to inanimate objects.

Hyperbole is an exaggeration of any properties of an object.

Epithets are special tropes. In literature they occupy a very important place, as they characterize the characteristics of an object: size, color. If we are talking about something animate, then this trope can clarify character and appearance.

Parcellation is one of the ways to place emphasis on the desired part of a sentence by separating it from the main sentence.

Now you have an idea of ​​what trails are and what they are like. This knowledge can be useful to you not only for analysis but also for creating your own original texts. Keeping in mind the expressive function of tropes, you can easily diversify the vocabulary of your work with fancy phrases that will make it individual and unique.

So, knowing what tropes are, you can create your own literary masterpieces that will turn out to be as unusual and individual as possible!

Paths and figures

4. Personification is a trope through which inanimate objects, natural phenomena, abstract concepts appear either in human form (anthropomorphism) or in the form of another living creature. Personification is closely related to mythological consciousness, which is based on the animation and deification of all living things. It is not surprising that personification is one of the most frequent tropes in folklore: wind-father; mother river etc.

Personification can be expressed:

Metaphorical definition ( the dozing bell woke up the fields);

Nouns ( silent old man);

Metaphorical verb and its forms ( and the dark forest, bending, dozes);

Personifying comparisons ( and the sun, like a cat, pulls the ball towards itself).

5 . Metonymy(with gr. renaming) - this trope is based on transfer by contiguity, that is, objects or phenomena are connected by a causal or other connection. In essence, metonymy is a condensed description of an object. There are a huge number of connections between the phenomena that form metonymic expressions. Let's highlight only the main ones:

Between content and containing: the whole samovar is drunk;

Between an action and the instrument of that action: their villages and fields for the violent raid / He condemned them to swords and fires;

Between an object and the material from which it is made: porcelain and bronze on the table;

Between a place and the people who are in it: And restless Petersburg / Already awakened by the drum;

Between a sign and its bearer: gluttonous youth flies.

6. Synecdoche- a trope, which is a type of metonymy. With synecdoche, transference is based on quantitative relationships. Even M.V. Lomonosov in his “Brief Guide to Eloquence” identified seven main types of synecdoche. This classification, with minor amendments, is also found in modern reference dictionaries:

1. replacing the specific concept with a generic one: Well, sit down, darling!

2. replacing the generic concept with a specific one: Most of all, take care and save a penny

3. using the name of a part instead of the name of the whole: I just need a roof over my head

4. using the name of the whole instead of the name of the part: he was buried in the globe

5. use of units instead of plural: Swede, Russian, stabs, chops, cuts

6. use of plural instead of singular: We all look at Napoleons

7. definite quantity instead of indefinite: there are suddenly thousands lying around

7. Hyperbole– a trope based on excessive exaggeration, intensification of a feature. Basically, such features as size, weight, color, quantity, intensity of processes, etc. are subject to exaggeration: the blood boiled in his veins like melted metal.

The history of hyperbole is quite long: being widespread in folklore works (epics, fairy tales, proverbs, sayings), it is also frequent in modern literature.

The functions of a hyperbola are diverse. In various eras, it could express solemn delight, convey strong, vivid feelings of heroes, and be used as a characterological means when creating an image, especially a comic one.

8. Meiosis is the reverse trope of hyperbole. It is based on deliberate understatement: The stroller is light as a feather. Particularly interesting are the cases when the authors connect hyperbole and meiosis:

Adishche city ​​windows were broken

On the tiny ones, sucking with lightshellish .

Some researchers confuse the concepts of meiosis and litotes, since translated from Greek. the latter means simplicity, smallness, moderation. However, more often the term "litotes" is used in the case of "negation of the opposite" or "negation reverse property»: Believe me: I listened not without sympathy.

9. Oxymoron(oxymoron) - a trope (or, in the minds of some researchers, a stylistic figure) consisting of a combination of two words that contradict each other in meaning and are connected by attributive relations. With an oxymoron, the lexical meaning is always played out:

a living corpse, a skinny hero, self-confident and embarrassed.

10. Periphrase(s)- a trope that consists in replacing a word or expression with a descriptive phrase in which the more essential features of the denoted are named:

Farewell, free element (sea); singer of Gyaur and Juan

Periphrase(s) has several varieties:

a) antonomasia or antonomasia (from Greek renaming), including the following cases

Replacing a proper name with a descriptive phrase is indirect naming ( land of the rising sun; author of The Master and Margarita);

Usage own name, as a rule, widely known, instead of a common noun, to name another person endowed with similar features: Russian Sappho (about young Akhmatova), Russian Rubens (about Kustodiev);

Using a place name associated with an event to refer to similar events: Third Rome (about Moscow);

Using instead of a proper name to name a person, phenomenon, place, the name of its main property, characteristic: and here the white one (about death) marks the houses with crosses

b) dysphemism or cacofemism - the deliberate use of rude, vulgar, stylistically reduced, sometimes obscene words for the purpose of expressing a sharply negative assessment or creating other stylistic effects: Why am I lighter than all the idiots, but also darker than all the crap?

c) euphemism - replacing a harsh taboo word or expression with a softer, ethically and aesthetically acceptable: only a woman who came here to sell / her beauty

11. Irony – a trope in which a word or statement takes on a meaning in the context of speech that is opposite or negates its literal meaning. In stylistics, to denote this phenomenon, there is also the term antiphrasis - the use of a word, as well as a phrase or sentence in a meaning opposite to the usual one, which is achieved using context or a certain intonation: how lovely! Deceive a person and then pretend to be an angel.

"Flowers of Eloquence." Paths and figures of speech, their role in the creation of a poetic text.

Analysis of a poetic work is an attempt to get closer to the position of the author, empathy, conversation “from soul to soul.” This is imagination and the ability to respond to the text with feeling. The main thing is to comprehend the poem and in no case replace analysis with a description of personal impressions of this work.

The basis of the work when analyzing a lyric poem is the comprehension of the word and image. Lyric poetry is the secret of language, the word that acquires special expressiveness. In context, it is connected with other words by many stylistic, semantic, grammatical, syntactic and other connections. “Every poem is a veil stretched over the edges of several words. These words shine like stars, because of them the poem exists,” wrote A.A. Blok

Paths (from Greek - turn) - figures of speech, the use of words and expressions in a figurative sense. Paths – transformation, rethinking of language units. They are based on a comparison of two concepts that seem close to our consciousness. Paths play a certain role in creating an image, in embodying a theme and idea. Together with figures of speech (turns of speech, syntactic constructions that enhance the expressiveness of a statement), tropes are called “flowers of eloquence.” There are more than two hundred species.

Means of expressive speech

Language device

Definition of reception

Examples

Allegory

(statement)

Representation of an abstract concept through a concrete image.

Allegorical depiction of the war of 1812. In the fable of I.A. Krylov "Wolf in the kennel"

Alliteration

Repetition of consonant sounds in the text.

The rustling of their peaks is a familiar sound. I was greeted.

(A. Pushkin)

Anaphora

Repetition of words and phrases at the beginning of sentences

I swear by the first day of creation,

I swear on his last day,

I swear by the shame of crime...

(M. Lermontov)

Antithesis

Contrast, opposition of phenomena and concepts

I am a king - I am a slave, I am a worm - I am God!

(G. Derzhavin)

Assonance

Repetition of stressed vowel sounds in the text.

Do I wander along the noisy streets,

I enter a crowded temple...

(A. Pushkin)

Asyndeton

Intentional omission of conjunctions

Swede, Russian - stabs, chops, cuts.

(A. Pushkin)

Hyperbola

Artistic exaggeration

I saw how she squints:

With a wave, the mop is ready!

(N.A. Nekrasov)

Gradation

Arrangement of words and expressions in increasing (ascending) or decreasing (descending) significance

They, these vegetables, were really blue,

or rather, dark purple, almost

black, glossy, some kind of leather.

(V. Kataev)

Nominative

(case) topics

Use of the nominative case to identify the topic at the beginning of the text

Pushkin... This bright name accompanies you for life

Inversion

Violation direct order words

On the winter, boring road

Three greyhounds are running...

(A. Pushkin)

Irony

Using a word in the opposite sense to its direct meaning; mockery

Why, smart one, are you delusional? (about Donkey) (I. Krylov)

Compositional joint

Litotes

Repetition at the beginning of a new sentence of words that conclude the previous one

Artistic understatement

At dawn the robin began to sing. She sang and miraculously

combined all the rustles in her song,

rustles... (N. Sladkov)

... And the leaf and tree are already making noise. The birds are singing.

(V. Trediakovsky)

Metaphor

Transferring value from one

phenomenon or (subject) to another based on the similarity between them

Life in Gremyachey Meadow reared up, like a restive horse before a difficult

obstacle.

(M. Sholokhov)

Metonymy

Transfer value (renaming) based on the contiguity of phenomena

Black tailcoats flashed and rushed, separately and in heaps, here and there...

(N. Gogol)

Multi-Union

Intentional use of repeated conjunctions

There is coal, and uranium, and rye, and grapes.

(V. Inber)

Occasionalisms

(neologisms)

... Some stunning absurdities began to take root in our lives, the fruits of the new Russian education.

(G. Smirnov)

Oxymoron

(oxymoron)

A combination of words with opposite meanings

And the impossible is possible

The long road is easy.

(A. Blok)

Personification

Transferring human properties to an inanimate object

Luna laughed like a clown.

(S. Yesenin)

Paired connection of homogeneous members

The structure of the school building and the area around it, the size and equipment of the premises, temperature conditions and lighting influence the health of children.

Parcellation

Intentional division of a sentence into semantically significant segments

My heart swells with joy. Incomprehensible. Inexplicable. And beautiful.

Paraphrase(s)

A descriptive turn of phrase in which the name of an object, person, or phenomenon is replaced by its attribute

It's a sad time! Eyes charm! (about autumn)

(A. Pushkin)

Rhetorical question, exclamation, appeal

Expressing a statement in interrogative form; to attract attention; increased emotional impact

What are the joys in a foreign land? They are in their native land...

(K. Batyushkov)

Sarcasm

The highest degree of irony

The entire poem by M. Lermontov “Gratitude” is filled with sarcasm.

Synecdoche

Transfer of meaning from one phenomenon to another based on the quantitative relationship between them (used singular instead of plural, plural instead of singular, part instead of whole...)

...And it was heard until dawn,

How the Frenchman rejoiced.

Syntactic parallelism

Similar parallel construction of phrases, lines

Tie your hand to your body - it

will dry out. Deprive a person of the opportunity or need to believe - his soul will dry out

(S. Soloveichik)

Comparison

Compilations of phenomena or concepts in order to highlight especially important sign

A selfish man withers like a lonely barren tree

(I. S. Turgenev)

Default

An interrupted statement

enabling

speculate, speculate

What happened with me?

Father... Mazepa...

(A. Pushkin)

Epithet

Figurative definition,

characterizing property,

quality of a person

phenomenon of an object

Killed!.. Why sobs now,

Empty praise unnecessary chorus

And the pathetic babble of excuses?

(M. Lermontov)

Epiphora

Repeating words and phrases at the end of sentences

I would like to know why I am a titular councilor? Why titular adviser?

(N. Gogol)

Observation of language material

Drumming, clicks, grinding, The thunder of guns, stomping, neighing, groaning, And death and hell on all sides. (A. Pushkin)

I'm sad because you're having fun. (M. Lermontov)

There is an abyss of space in every word; every word is immense, like a poet. (N. Gogol)

I only look at you with reverence when, bowing quietly, you scatter your black hair on the pale marble (A. Pushkin)

He fell on the cold snow, On the cold snow, like a pine tree, like a pine tree in a damp forest, chopped off at the resinous root. (M. Lermontov)


Dark or insignificant
But they don't care
It's impossible to listen.

How full their sounds are
Madness of desire!
They contain tears of separation,
They have the thrill of a date.

(M. Lermontov)

2. Find tropes, stylistic figures and their types.

Why in the language of departed peopleWere there thunders of singing passions?And hints of the ringing of all times and feasts,And the harmony of colorful words?Why in the language of modern peopleThe sound of bones being poured into a hole?The imitation of words is like an echo of rumor,Like the murmur of marsh grass?Because when, young and proud,Water appeared between the rocks,She was not afraid to break forward,If you stand in front of her, she will kill you.And it kills, and floods, and runs transparently,He only values ​​his will.Thus a ringing sound is born for the times to come,For the pale tribes of today.(K. Balmont)

The components of the analysis of a poetic text include its verbal structure: features of vocabulary, morphology, syntax. They have long been studied by poetics as tropes and stylistic figures that contain evaluation. In the tropes – the author’s position.

The most important role in artistic speech is played by tropes - words and expressions used not in a literal, but in a figurative meaning. Tropes create so-called allegorical imagery in a work, when an image arises from the rapprochement of one object or phenomenon with another.

This is the most general function of all tropes - to reflect in the structure of the image a person’s ability to think by analogy, to embody, in the words of the poet, “the bringing together of distant things,” thus emphasizing the unity and integrity of the world around us.

At the same time, the artistic effect of the trope, as a rule, is stronger, the farther the phenomena being brought together are separated from each other: such, for example, is Tyutchev’s likening of lightning to “deaf-mute demons.”

Using this trope as an example, one can trace another function of allegorical imagery: to reveal the essence of a particular phenomenon, usually hidden, the potential poetic meaning contained in it. So, in our example, Tyutchev, with the help of a rather complex and non-obvious trope, forces the reader to take a closer look at such an ordinary phenomenon as lightning, to see it from an unexpected side. For all its complexity, the trope is very accurate: indeed, it is natural to describe the reflections of lightning without thunder with the epithet “deaf and mute.”

For literary analysis (as opposed to linguistic analysis), it is extremely important to distinguish between general linguistic tropes, that is, those that are included in the language system and are used by all its speakers, and authorial tropes, which are used once by a writer or poet in a given specific situation.

Only the tropes of the second group are capable of creating poetic imagery; the first group - general linguistic tropes - for obvious reasons should not be taken into account in the analysis. The fact is that common language tropes, due to frequent and widespread use, seem to be “erased”, lose their figurative expressiveness, are perceived as a cliche and, because of this, are functionally identical to vocabulary without any figurative meaning.

Thus, in Pushkin’s line “From the surrounding mountains the snow has already fled in muddy streams” contains a common linguistic trope - the personification of “escaped”, but when reading the text we don’t even think about it, and the author did not set such a task for himself, using something that has already lost its expressive meaning design. True, it should be noted that sometimes a common language, worn-out trope can be “refreshed” by rethinking, introducing additional meanings, etc.

Thus, the common linguistic metaphor “rain - tears” is no longer impressive, but here’s how Mayakovsky rethinks this image: “Tears from the eyes, from the drooping eyes of drainpipes.” By introducing new poetic meanings (houses are personified, and drainpipes are associated with eyes), the image acquires new pictorial and expressive power.

One of the most common methods of “refreshing” a general language trope is the method of its implementation; Most often, a metaphor is realized. At the same time, the trope acquires details that seem to force the reader to perceive it not in a figurative, but in a literal sense. Let us give two examples from the work of Mayakovsky, who often used this technique. The poem “Cloud in Pants” implements the common linguistic metaphor “nerves were diverging”:

like a sick person out of bed,

the nerve jumped.

First I walked

barely,

then he ran in

excited,

Now he and the new two

They rush about with desperate tap dancing.

The plaster on the lower floor collapsed.

small,

are jumping madly,

The nerves make your legs give way!

Another example: the implementation of the metaphorical expression “making a molehill out of a molehill.” It is clear that in the general linguistic “elephant” no specifics are assumed: it is not a real, but a metaphorical elephant, and Mayakovsky gives it exactly the features of a real elephant: “He makes an elephant out of a fly and sells the ivory.”

The metaphorical elephant has no Ivory it cannot be, he is simply a designation, a sign of something very large as opposed to something very small - a fly. Mayakovsky gives the elephant concreteness, thereby making the image unexpected, arresting attention and producing a poetic impression.

In the analysis of a specific work, it is important not only and not so much to analyze this or that trope (although this can be useful so that students understand the mechanism of action of an artistic micro-image), but to evaluate how allegorical imagery is characteristic of a given work or a given writer, to what extent it is important in the overall image system, in the formation of the artistic style.

Thus, Lermontov or Mayakovsky are characterized by frequent and regular use of tropes, while Pushkin and Tvardovsky, for example, are characterized by a rare and sparing use of allegorical imagery; there the figurative system is built using other means.

There are quite a large number of varieties of tropes; Since you can read about them in educational and reference publications, we will simply list the most important ones here without definitions or examples. So, the tropes include: comparison, metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche, hyperbole, litotes, allegory, symbol, irony (not to be confused with the typological variety of pathos!), oxymoron (or oxymoron), periphrasis, etc.

Esin A.B. Principles and techniques of analyzing a literary work. - M., 1998