Personification
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Most rhetorical devices have classical Greek names, arriving in English through Latin and French: analepsis, metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche, … But there are some common cases, like personification, where the English word is entirely Latinate, although the Greeks certainly used knew and used the technique. The OED's etymology is "Formed within English, by derivation", and the earliest OED citation is from 1728.
This came up because I started a post about Elle Cordova's use of personification in her clever skit “Subatomic particles hang out in the Universe Saloon”:
(For a less artistic approach to the subject of the Universe Saloon chain, see Steve Nadis, "Diminishing Dark Energy May Evade the ‘Swampland’ of Impossible Universes", Quanta Magazine 8/19/2024.)
Someone in the comments section will probably tell us what term or phrase the Greeks used for "personification". But meanwhile, I'll share with you something interesting that I found in looking for the history of other rhetorical terminology, starting with metaphor. Quintilian wrote about mĕtaphŏra in Book 8 of his Institutio Oratoria, and like other Latin authors, he transliterated the word directly from the Greek model μεταφορά, which literally meant "transport" (and still does). But I think his proposed constraint on the use of metaphors was an original peeve:
At ego id agendo nec pastorem populi auctore Homero dixerim, nec volucres per aera nare, licet hoc Vergilius id apibus ac Daedalo speciosissime sit usus. metaphora enim aut vacantem occupare locum debet aut, si id alienum venit, plus valere eo quod expellet.
For my own part I should not regard a phrase like “the shepherd of the people” as admissible in pleading, although it has the authority of Homer, nor would I venture to say that winged creatures “swim through the air,” despite the fact that this metaphor has been most effectively employed by Virgil to describe the flight of bees and of Daedalus. For metaphor should always either occupy a place already vacant, or if it fills the room of something else, should be more impressive than that which it displaces.
Personification can be seen as a kind of metaphor — a bartender giving beer to a customer == the Higgs boson giving mass to a quark. But under whatever name, it's a technique that Elle Cordova has used effectively in this and other skits, in ways that Quintilian wouldn't have objected to. I covered an earlier example in “ICYMI: Aptos replaces Calibri”, 3/2/2024.
Update — Le Dictionnaire de l'Académie Française has personnification, said to be
xviiie siècle. Dérivé de personnifier.
…which raises the question of who copied whom, but doesn't otherwise help.
J.W. Brewer said,
August 20, 2024 @ 10:30 am
As used in the technical-theological-discussions register of Later Latin, "persona" (as in the various "Persons" of the Trinity) was calqued from the Patristic Greek use of πρόσωπον, which also seems to have been used (although I'm not sure in what century this usage started) by Greek grammarians: e.g. "first person" as applied to pronouns is ὸ πρῶτον πρόσωπον. But I don't know if there was a use of πρόσωπον or a derivative thereof in the master list of technical Greek labels for different rhetorical devices.
Coby said,
August 20, 2024 @ 12:14 pm
I think that prosopopoeia (προσωποποιία) is the Greek word you are looking for.
Mark Liberman said,
August 20, 2024 @ 12:49 pm
@Coby: "I think that prosopopoeia (προσωποποιία) is the Greek word you are looking for."
Latin maybe yes, Greek maybe not?
The Latin lexicon entry gives the gloss of "personification", but the cited examples are just "putting of speeches in the mouths of characters" — which is the gloss that the Greek lexicon entry gives.
Rodger C said,
August 20, 2024 @ 2:19 pm
One of the Old Irish glosses (Sangallensis 162a3) quotes the sentence "possunt tamen etiam in primam inueniri persona et secunda per poetarum προσωποποιίας," which is glossed ".i. in tan labratar ind filid a persin inna ndea, do-gniat priman & secundam in illis, ' i.e. "When the poets speak in the person of the gods, they make the first and second in them." (I'm not a profound student of OI; I just spotted that gloss long ago and found it Cool.)
Rodger C said,
August 20, 2024 @ 2:21 pm
*primam
BZ said,
August 20, 2024 @ 3:00 pm
Anthropomorphism?
Philip Anderson said,
August 20, 2024 @ 6:08 pm
It seems possible that Latin persona came from Greek πρόσωπον via Etruscan.
Lucas Christopoulos said,
August 20, 2024 @ 11:22 pm
For προσωποποιίας, see: Walter Puchner, "Miscellanea byzantina historica. Studies on the theater in Byzantium. A) Hypocrisy in the Byzantine theater. Evidence and hypothesis b.) Three recent monographs on the Byzantine theater", in: The myth of Ariadne. Ten Theatrical Studies, published by the Hestia Library, Athens, 2001, pp. 21-23
Theatrical works in the Byzantine period Dialogues The "Acta" in the hippodrome and the synods were of a dialogic form, rhythmic acclamations with stereotyped expressions, which were sung by the Municipalities or the factions and to which the Emperor's heralds responded. We find dialogue elements in the Egomion of the Virgin by Proclus of Constantinople. We have antiphonic elements in hymnologies of Syrian origins and the Christmas hymn cycle of Sophronius of Constantinople. Dialogue and direct speech are the rhetorical forms of the Byzantine προσωποποιίας: character Verses in Hades, the parable of Rich and Poor Lazarus etc.
Benjamin E. Orsatti said,
August 21, 2024 @ 7:51 am
Certainly, this is something that should be hung on every writer's study wall: "For metaphor should always either occupy a place already vacant, or if it fills the room of something else, should be more impressive than that which it displaces."
A question: Does the "persona-" in "personification" denote purely the modern sense of "individual human being", or does it still have some flavor of the Etruscan "persona-", meaning theater mask? That is, in the sense that when we read, e.g., "Winter kept us warm, covering Earth in forgetful snow, feeding A little life with dried tubers," the snow is "playing the rôle" of an absent-minded force of Nature?
Yves Rehbein said,
August 22, 2024 @ 4:31 pm
On a poetic level, "mass" is a fresh served double entendre, compare christ-mass, because people need something new to believe in.
Oh and by god I mean isn't that just a mask you get to wear in theatre if you are really good at playing anger?
JJM said,
August 23, 2024 @ 9:35 am
It looks very much like English took "personify" from French "personnifier" and then later followed up the French coining of "personnification" from "personnifier" with "personification'
from "personify".
TR said,
August 23, 2024 @ 4:42 pm
Prosopopoeia can be a subtype of personification where a speech is given to an abstract concept, as when Socrates converses with the laws in the Crito or when Cicero channels the patria to inveigh against Catiline. I can't find a specific Greek term for personification generally in Anderson's Glossary of Greek Rhetorical Terms or in the glossary at the end of the Loeb Philostratus. You'd think they'd have had one given how addicted they were to it.