Epitrope (e-pi’-tro-pe): A figure in which one turns things over to one’s hearers, either pathetically, ironically, or in such a way as to suggest a proof of something without having to state it. Epitrope often takes the form of granting permission (hence its Latin name, permissio), submitting something for consideration, or simply referring to the abilities of the audience to supply the meaning that the speaker passes over (hence Puttenham’s term, figure of reference). Epitrope can be either biting in its irony, or flattering in its deference.
“The winged paranoid jockeys for position in the race toward dread.” You know what that means just like everything else. I can see it or your smug little bungalow that’s your face. Go ahead! Tell me, Ms. Holy Hermeneutical. Yeah, I knew you’d keep your mouth shut like a showroom dummy.
“Bake me cake as fast as you can with raspberries, potato’s, and a fat toucan.” I’m ready. Come on Madam Poetry Bender. Tell me a story about the cake. Make my hair stand on end. Give me liberty or give me depth—I’m so damn shallow, like a puddle after a quick drizzle on a Las Vegas sidewalk, in August at night.n. What, nothing? You’re supposed to know all meaning—you’re an English professor. You disentangle Shakespeare, with his “yon windows” and “a kingdom for a horse.” It all means something. Something we can hang our hopes and fears from like banners blowing in the wind, in a hurricane—stripped a frayed like the souls who hung them from fences and trees, rooftops and stop signs. Nothing out of you. You are like a Sphinx, I’ve heard you speak—to dogs, and cows, and children, and me,, sitting alone in the boredom-sphere while you blabber and honk out your loathsome lullaby’s celebrating narrow trash-strewn alleyways.
One more. One more chance for you to say something meaningful in response to my masterful musings. You are my Muse—ha ha.
“Bellicose onions faced the train tracks—beaming brightly at the spilled coal, ancient postulates— media of the roiling past—a river carrying everything that exists to the rocky shores of today. Unique and the same, like black snowflakes, like everything, like nothing, like your seamed stockings—sometimes crooked, sometimes straight. A paperclip pasted to a wall—insincere, unable, no function, next, there is a thumbtack, pressed under the paperclip, a tribute to soft surfaces stabbed by little button things. How ironic.”
Go! It is your turn to say something beautiful and meaningful, launched from the linguistic pad I’ve provided. Come on! You’re a critic. You have a voice. You have an outlook. You surely have an opinion too. Speak! No.?
Her: “Yes. I think you are a pompous ass.Your writing sucks. Are we done? I’ve wasted enough time. I have papers to grade, and I have to meet With the Dean later this afternoon. Get a life.”
Him: “Ok. You win, but can we keep dating?”
Definition courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu).
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