Figure Name | antiprosopopoeia |
Source | Silva Rhetoricae (http://humanities.byu.edu/rhetoric/Silva.htm); Macbeth (1876) ("anti-personification"); Bullinger (1898) ("antiprosopopoeia; or, anti-personification") |
Earliest Source | None |
Synonyms | anti-personification, antipersonification, antiprosopopoeia |
Etymology | anti "opposite" prefixed, hence, opposite of prosopopoeia |
Type | Trope |
Linguistic Domain |
Semantic |
Definition |
1. The representation of persons as inanimate objects. 2. Anti-Personification. To show, curiously, with what opposite instruments the mind can work, let us observe that to represent a person as a thing may energetically lower or ridicule; as when, of John Gilpin, Cowper says at a critical moment of the hero's equestrian experience: 3. The opposite of Prosopopoeia; Persons represented as inanimate things... The name is given to this figure because it is the opposite of the other: "persons being represented as things," instead of things as persons. (Bullinger, 854) |
Example |
1. She was a doormat upon which the tread of too many boots had scraped. (Silva Rhetoricae) 2. "How, in the name of soldiership and sense, 3. 2 Sam. 16:9. -"Then said Abishai the son of Zeruiah unto the king. Why should this dead dog curse thy lord, the king? let me go over, I pray thee, and take off his head." (Bullinger, 854) |
Kind Of | Identity Opposition |
Part Of | |
Related Figures | personification, prosopopoeia |
Notes | |
Confidence | Unconfident |
Last Editor | Ioanna Malton |
Confidence | Unconfident |
Editorial Notes | |
Reviewed | No |