Figuration

Abstract

This chapter considers the poetic tropes that together form early modern understanding of figuration, notably the four ‘master tropes’—metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche, and irony. It situates the figurative poetic practice of Fulke Greville with reference to rhetorical theory, both ancient and modern. The work of Kenneth Burke, whose taxonomy of figuration in A Grammar of Motives (1945) underpins this chapter, here helps us to reconsider the performative nature of figuration and its connections to dramatic performance. Greville’s modern editor, the poet Thom Gunn, is a further touchstone for my readings of Caelica and Treatise of Human Learning (both posthumously published in 1633). Together, the insights of Burke, Gunn, and others can allow us to see the figurative practice of Greville’s sixteenth-century poetics afresh.