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metalepsis
by Blake More - Friday, 7 December 2012, 06:56 PM
  Metalepsis is, I believe, a relatively new literary trope (figure of speech) being promoted by Harold Bloom and James Faubion and a raft of sane critics alongside some very insane ones. Its origin is   προφανώς    Greek but I don't find it in the dictionaries. I do find μετάληψη  but this mean Holy Communion or Eucharist. There are several tropes that were put together by the early Romans on the basis of Greek roots and they have come into Enlgish and other modern lauguages but the Greeks interestingly never used them as tropes. Ι would be grateful for any information anyone can give me about metalepsis.
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Re: metalepsis
by Greg Brush - Saturday, 8 December 2012, 10:50 AM
  In transliterations from Greek, especially during the Renaissance, the Ancient/Classical Greek vowels η and ω (long ε and long ο respectively) became the Roman alphabet vowels e and o. So a Greek word such as μετάληψις was transliterated as metalepsis, which we pronounce in English with stress on the penult rather than on the antepenult.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word metalepsis is first observed in English in 1577, and referred to a specific kind of allusion in rhetorics.

For more about the meaning of the word itself, take a look at the Wikipedia article on Metalepsis.

Regards,
Greg Brush
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Re: metalepsis
by Blake More - Saturday, 8 December 2012, 11:39 AM
 

To Greg Brush:

Thank you muchly for this very valuable information. But I am not clear on whether I should understand from your answer that there is in modern Greek a word corresponding to English metalepsis and whether it is μετάληψις and whether Greek uses it, or ever used it, to designate a literary trope. I hope I am not being a pain in the neck but I would like to get as much information as I can.

Good wishes.

Blake More

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Re: metalepsis
by Greg Brush - Saturday, 8 December 2012, 01:18 PM
  The Modern Greek equivalent of katharevousa μετάληψις, a participation (< anc. μεταλαμβάνω, Ι take part in, share) is μετάληψη, but both words have the religious meaning that you noted -- the taking of the Holy Communion in the Orthodox mass.

I have a Greek lexicon of the Roman and Byzantine periods (146 B.C. - 1100 A.D.) that does have a single citation for μετάληψις in its rhetorical sense of referring to an interchange of words. However, that was apparently even then a very specialized meaning which does not appear to be used today, since Βικιπαίδεια, the Greek version of Wikipedia, has only a couple mentions of μετάληψις and then only in the religious sense of Holy Communion (Θεία Kοινωνία) or Holy Eucharist (Θεία Ευχαριστία).

Regards,
Greg Brush
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Re: metalepsis
by Blake More - Saturday, 8 December 2012, 03:36 PM
 

This is all quite fascinating and I was enlightened (to say the least) by your response and I thank you.

I had a similar experience in trying to find the Modern Greek equivalent of English 'asyndeton.' There is of course the (generally) semantic equivalent ασύδετος but this is never, apparently, used in reference to a literary trope.

Again, thank you for all this help, and good wishes,

Blake More