 Giambattista Vico's Four Principle Tropes
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1) Metaphor:
— Metaphor is the most Luminous and Frequent of the Principle Tropes
— Metaphor gives Sense [Sensation] and Passion [Emotion] to "insensate things"
— Every Metaphor is a "fable in brief"
— In all languages, most Metaphors for Inanimate Objects are Anthropmorphic
2) Metonymy:
— Metonymy of Agent for Act
— Metonymy of Subject for Form and Accident
— Metonymy of Cause for Effect
3) Synecdoche: Developed into Metaphor as Parts united to form Wholes
4) Irony: Falsehood that wears the mask of Truth
Vico on the Principle Tropes:
"From all this it follows that all the tropes (and they are all reducible to the four types above), which have hitherto been considered ingenious inventions of writers, were necessary modes of expression of all the first poetic nations, and had originally their full native propriety. But these expression of the first nations later became figurative when, with the further development of the human mind, words were invented which signified abstract forms or genera comprising their species or relating parts to their wholes."
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