Metalepsis

Metalepsis or Greek metalepsis (literally about " Across Acquisition") is a term from classical rhetoric, learned a new use in narrative theory. Since the term was also used within the rhetoric already in different contexts, a total of three, but inter-related uses are to be distinguished:

• The metalepsis as a form of figurative speech, as a symbol figure or trope of classical rhetoric.
• The metalepsis as a term for a special relationship with the narrative levels in narrative theory.
• The oldest use of the term is that in the theory of forensic speech. See article status theory ( rhetoric ).

For the concept of classical rhetoric, the Greek form is preferably used for the narrative theory, the common also in French " metalepsis ", but you may also encounter each of the other form.

The metalepsis of classical rhetoric

The metalepsis or metalepsis is defined differently in classical rhetoric:

• Would say as the replacement of a word by a partial synonym, but this is not meant in the context, so if you " meet the court " instead of " The meal shall meet ". This definition was first used at Tryphon in the 1st century BC, in his treatise Peri tropone, and was picked up by Quintilian. The latter cites as examples condescending word games with the meaning of proper names (eg Verres, boar, or Catus, crafty ), who were obviously frowned upon by the Romans.
• As a nod over several mediating notions of time, as a kind of " remote metonymy ," so when, to perform the same one of the most cited examples, Virgil at one point ( Eclogues 1, 69) of ears speak, but that harvests and transferred years my. In Quintilian's discussion of metalepsis in the institutions oratoria this view has already been created, favored as the main importance of Aelius Donatus it is in the 4th century, which is also called the Virgil example.
• As a representation of the foregoing, by the following and vice versa. Content dating back to Philipp Melanchthon, this definition is quoted often by César Dumarsais ' Des Tropes ou the différents sens of 1729.

The former meaning has been illustrated frequently in theory follow Quintilian, but his rejection of this figure was divided in the same way with. He calls it " extremely rare and unseemly, but more common among the Greeks " (Institutes oratoria 08/06/37 ). As a Greek example, he brings the appointment of the centaur Cheiron (what " low " means ) as "the runt ." A sensible use way he looks at best in comedy (ibid. 39).

George Puttenham (1529-1590) understands the metalepsis in his influential book, The Arte of English poetry from 1589 in the second meaning and translates it from there as the farfet, " the far-fetched ".

Already Quintilian wrote, metalepsis open " as if the way of a trope to another " (ibid. 37). Giambattista Vico summarizes in his Institutiones oratoriae of 1711, the first and second word meaning to the more general, but also precise definition together: metalepsis was "a linking of several tropical " ( plurium troporum nexus, § 42). In the chapter " Poetic Chronology " Scienza nuova he raises his " evolutionary rationality " (A. Burkhardt) Virgil's example shows, by pointing out that in a peasant society the years a long time must have been counted after the harvests before a abstract term " year " took shape.

The metalepsis of narrative theory

In literary studies, is always spoken of a metalepsis if (at least) two separate narrative levels (eg extradiegetic the level of the narrator and the fictional Intradiegese of what he says ) are unconstitutional logic mixed together. The term "narrative metalepsis " ( " metalepsis narrative" ) was introduced by Gérard Genette, in " Discours du récit " ( Figures III, 1972).

In Genette refers to the "narrative metalepsis " crossing the boundary between fiction internal internal world and an equally fictitious world of the frame narrator. This may on the one hand mean that the narrator ( with the empirical author! Than figure or even voice of a fictional text, not to be confused ) interferes with the action of his story. This is paradoxical insofar as the narrator so that the simulation of factuality gives up and reveals that his story is only fictitious. On the other counts for Genette also the motivic reversal of this intrusion into a fictional world, namely the emergence of a figure of the internal narrative in the ( also fictional ) ' reality ' of the frame narrative, to metalepsis. Genette cites as an example for this second case, Julio Cortázar's short story " Continuidad de los Parques " from Final del Juego (Eng. end of the game ), in which the characters kill their readers. In his essay rather associative metalepsis 2004 Genette extends this approach to the description of films and other works of art from, for example, Woody Allen's The Purple Rose of Cairo, but that also blurs the conceptual clarity of 1972.

John Hollander understands metalepsis in The Figure of Echo as a literary allusion and cultural echo, so he moved into the vicinity of the topos.

Related metalepsis is the mise en abyme narrative (French: " Send in the abyss " in the sense of " extend to infinity / Bottomless " ) ( theoretically explicated by Lucien Dallenbach ) by André Gide. The name is inspired by the Heraldry and refers to the repetition of the same coat of arms in miniature on the sign. Correspondingly, the mise en abyme narrative for a text which implies, ( reduced in scale ) again to contain himself. Since such potentiation would lead to infinity and no printed text can be infinite, can only suggest a " mise en abyme " in the literature. A similar effect can also be observed in a mirror flight, in the repeated one's own mirror image almost endless and is less of reflection to reflection.

(But without giving the phenomenon that term that was coined later by Genette ) An interesting indication of the function of metalepses is Jorge Luis Borges in " Magias parciales del Quijote " (Spanish: " Partial Magic in the Quixote " ): " Why, it worries us so much that the map is included in the map and the 1001 nights in the book Arabian Nights, why it worries us that Don Quixote reader of the Quixote, Hamlet spectator of Hamlet? , I think, found the cause to have: such permutations suggest that if the characters of a fiction can be readers or viewers, [ and ] we their readers or spectators, can be fictitious ' (cf. Jorge Luis Borges, Obras Completas, Vol 2, Buenos Aires: Emece 1989, p 47).

Metaleptische structures are not only in narrative literature. Examples can be found, inter alia, to Ludwig Tieck's already in the early romantic dramas. Another example text with dramatic metalepses the play can Six Characters in Search of an Author ( 1921) by Luigi Pirandello be considered.