Metalepsis

"The early bird catches the worm", stereograph published in 1900 by North-Western View Co. of Baraboo, Wisconsin, digitally restored.

The moth genus Metalepsis is nowadays usually included in Cerastis.

Metalepsis (from Greek μετάληψις) is a figure of speech in which one thing is referred to by something else that is only remotely associated with it. Often the association works through a different figure of speech, or through a chain of cause and effect. Often metalepsis refers to the combination of several figures of speech into an altogether new one. Those base figures of speech can be literary references, resulting in a sophisticated form of allusion.

A synonym for metalepsis is transumption, derived from the Latin transsumptio invented by Quintilian as an equivalent for the Greek.

Examples

• "I've got to catch the worm tomorrow."
  • "The early bird catches the worm" is a common maxim, advocating getting an early start on the day to achieve success. The subject, by referring to this maxim, is compared to the bird; tomorrow, the speaker will awaken early in order to achieve success.

Quotes

"For the nature of metalepsis is that it is an intermediate step, as it were, to that which is metaphorically expressed, signifying nothing in itself, but affording a passage to something. It is a trope that we give the impression of being acquainted with rather than one that we actually ever need." -- Quintilian^[1]

"But the sense is much altered & the hearer's conceit strangely entangled by the figure Metalepsis, which I call the farfet, as when we had rather fetch a word a great way off than to use one nearer hand to express the matter as well & plainer."^[2]

"In a metalepsis, a word is substituted metonymically for a word in a previous trope, so that a metalepsis can be called, maddeningly but accurately, a metonymy of a metonymy."^[3]

Narratology

In narratology (and specifically in the theories of Gerard Genette), a paradoxical transgression of the boundaries between narrative levels or logically distinct worlds is also called metalepsis.

"Perhaps the most common example of metalepsis in narrative occurs when a narrator intrudes upon another world being narrated. In general, narratorial metalepsis arises most often when an omniscient or external narrator begins to interact directly with the events being narrated, especially if the narrator is separated in space and time from these events."^[4]

"There are so many examples of forking-path and metaleptic narratives by now that my recommendations will have to seem arbitrary. One of the most thoroughly enjoyable constructions of enigmatic worlds within worlds is Nabokov's Pale Fire (1962). A good short text is Robert Coover's The Babysitter (1969). In film, a frequently referenced forking-path narrative is Peter Howitt's Sliding Doors (1998)."^[5]

"[In Tom] Stoppard's The Real Inspector Hound, the framing diegetic situation is here equally a theatre. In this fictional theatre a whodunnit is performed, witnessed by an audience which includes two theatre critics. In the course of the embedded performance these critics become paradoxically involved in the hypodiegetic play within a play, an involvement which even leads to the death of one of them. Thus, as in the case of Pirandello's Sei personaggi, the typical traits of a metalepsis can here also be recognized: a fictional representation consisting of several distinct worlds and levels, among which unorthodox transgression occur."^[6]

See also

• Catachresis
• Metonymy

References

1. ^ "Book 8 - Chapter 6: Quintilian's Institutes of Oratory". Honeyl.public.iastate.edu. http://honeyl.public.iastate.edu/quintilian/8/chapter6.html. Retrieved 2012-03-04. 
2. ^ Puttenham, George (1569), The Arte of English Poesie, http://etext.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/PutPoes.html 
3. ^ Bloom, Harold (1975), A Map of Misreading, Oxford University Press, ISBN 978-0-19-516221-9, http://books.google.com/?id=WvLAEnHKM9oC&pg=PA102&lpg=PA102&dq=metalepsis 
4. ^ Estes, Douglas (2008), The Temporal Mechanics of the Fourth Gospel, Brill 
5. ^ H. Porter, Abbott (2008), The Cambridge Introduction to Narrative, 2nd ed., Cambridge Univ. Press 
6. ^ Wolf, Werner (2005), Metalepsis as a Transgeneric and Transmedial Phenomenon. In: Narratology Beyond Literary Criticism, ed. by Jan Christoph Meister., De Gruyter 

Literature

• Kukkonen, Karin – Klimek, Sonja (eds.). Metalepsis in Popular Culture. (Narratologia, 28.) Berlin: De Gruyter 2011. ISBN 978-3-11-025278-1 ISSN 1612-8427