Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun Literally, making (that is, inventing or imagining) a person; in rhetoric, originally, introduction, in a discourse or composition, of a pretended speaker, whether a person absent or deceased, or an abstraction or inanimate object: in modern usage generally limited to the latter sense, and accordingly equivalent to personification.
  • noun See prosopopeia.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun (Rhet.) A figure by which things are represented as persons, or by which things inanimate are spoken of as animated beings; also, a figure by which an absent person is introduced as speaking, or a deceased person is represented as alive and present. It includes personification, but is more extensive in its signification.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun rhetoric Personifying a person or object when communicating to an audience.
  • noun Personification of an abstraction.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun representing an abstract quality or idea as a person or creature

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Ancient Greek προσωποποιία ("dramatization, the putting of speeches into the mouths of characters").

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Examples

  • The prosopopoeia which is adopted by Plato in the Protagoras and other dialogues is repeated until we grow weary of it.

    Laws 2006

  • The Old and New Testament, which by a 'prosopopoeia' are here called the 'two witnesses.'

    The Literary Remains of Samuel Taylor Coleridge Henry Nelson Coleridge 1820

  • In my opinion, little honour is due to such as are mere lookers-on, liberal of their eyes, and of their crowns, and hide their silver; scratching their head with one finger like grumbling puppies, gaping at the flies like tithe calves; clapping down their ears like Arcadian asses at the melody of musicians, who with their very countenances in the depth of silence express their consent to the prosopopoeia.

    Five books of the lives, heroic deeds and sayings of Gargantua and his son Pantagruel 2002

  • Honest Pantagruel, not understanding the mystery, asked him, by way of interrogatory, what he did intend to personate in that new-fangled prosopopoeia.

    Five books of the lives, heroic deeds and sayings of Gargantua and his son Pantagruel 2002

  • In my opinion, little honour is due to such as are mere lookers-on, liberal of their eyes, and of their crowns, and hide their silver; scratching their head with one finger like grumbling puppies, gaping at the flies like tithe calves; clapping down their ears like Arcadian asses at the melody of musicians, who with their very countenances in the depth of silence express their consent to the prosopopoeia.

    Five books of the lives, heroic deeds and sayings of Gargantua and his son Pantagruel 2002

  • Honest Pantagruel, not understanding the mystery, asked him, by way of interrogatory, what he did intend to personate in that new-fangled prosopopoeia.

    Five books of the lives, heroic deeds and sayings of Gargantua and his son Pantagruel 2002

  • De Man called this biographical trope personification, prosopopoeia, literally "giving face" to an inanimate collection of words, transforming them into the features of a human life.

    The Last Formalist, or W.J.T. Mitchell as Romantic Dinosaur 1997

  • De Man called this biographical trope personification, prosopopoeia, literally "giving face" to an inanimate collection of words, transforming them into the features of a human life.

    The Sorrows of Young Wieboldt 1997

  • Dozens of refinements on standard descriptions hold meaning for ut pictura poesis but the matter is complicated since many medi - eval and Renaissance rhetoricians are in conflict over both definitions and examples for descriptio, charac - terismus, effictio, mimesis, notatio, informatio, diatypo - sis, prosopographia, prosopopoeia, and many other categories that demand varying amounts of formed concrete detail.

    Dictionary of the History of Ideas JOHN GRAHAM 1968

  • Here the only refuge of our adversaries is to cry up a prosopopoeia (Schlichting.p. 627) But how do they prove it?

    Pneumatologia 1616-1683 1967

Comments

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  • JM enjoys the spectre of a prosopopoeia as much as the next figment of his imagination.

    May 11, 2011