Landmark Essays on Tropes and Figures

The collection brings together, under different headings, the most significant 20th century contributions to the study of tropes and figures. The collection opens with Book IV of the anonymousRhetorica ad Herennium, the seminal, first extant treatment of figures upon which all subsequent work would be based. The book is divided into two parts. The first deals with essays on the development of the concepts, their definitions, and their decline; the second part deals with applications: how figures and tropes have been used in various disciplinary domains, from literary criticism, to politics, science, advertising, and music.