Figures I: Tropes

Then it wasn’t kind. It was irony: the words say one thing, and the speaker means the opposite. Irony is a trope.

A turn. In Greek, tropos means a turn. A trope turns a word away from its ordinary meaning.

In the Poetics, Aristotle says that the greatest thing by far is to be a master of metaphor. It is the one thing that cannot be learned from others, he says, and it is a sign of natural gifts, because to make a good metaphor is to see the likeness in things that are unlike.

In Book 3 of the Rhetoric, he explains why metaphors please us: they teach us something quickly. If you call old age “stubble”, the audience suddenly sees what old age and dry stubble have in common: both have lost their flower. The best metaphors, he says, bring things before the eyes: they show things alive and moving.

But he also warns: a metaphor must fit, like everything in style. It must not be too far-fetched, or too grand, or ridiculous. And hyperbole, wild exaggeration, belongs to young men and angry men; it does not suit an older speaker. The story below is about a speech that Aristotle quoted more than once.