Hypotyposis
/ˌhaɪpətaɪˈpoʊsɪs/ (from the ancient Greek ὑποτύπωσις/hupotúpôsis, "sketch, model ") is a figure of speech consisting of a realistic, animated, and striking description of the scene of which one wants to give an imagined representation and as if experienced at the moment of its expression. The speech of the nurse in the Prologue of Euripides' Medea, Racine's "dream of Athalie" in the play of the same name, Cicero's portrait of Clodius in his Pro Milone, or Émile Zola's description of the alembic in his novel L'Assommoir are examples of hypotyposes.
It can take the form of an enumeration of concrete details to such an extent that one can say that it crosses the conditions of form proper to a figure of speech. Indeed, the figure can easily go beyond the framework of the sentence to develop over several sentences or even several pages.
For the Latin orator Quintilian, hypotyposis is "the image of things, so well represented by the word that the listener believes he sees it rather than hears it[1]". It allows the composition of vast poetic tableaux "giving to see" a scene as if the limits of the sentence no longer existed. A figure based on the image, it has been, since the beginning of rhetoric, the preferred method for animating descriptions and striking the imagination of the interlocutor. It has several variants, depending on the object described. It is often confused with ekphrasis, which is a realistic and precise description of a work of art.
unlike hypotyposis which remains static. Some authors sometimes define diatyposis as a short hypotyposis. However, contrary to hypotyposis, diatyposis...
The site has lengthy extracts of these. Scans of editions of Proclus' Hypotyposis and his commentary on Euclid 1 at wilbourhall.org (Classical Greek and...
toward the subject, the reader, or herself or himself. Rhetorical device Hypotyposis Arp & Johnson (2009), p. 705 Arp & Johnson (2009), p. 712 Arp & Johnson...
to planetary) equatorium is contained in Proclus's 5th century work Hypotyposis, where he gives instructions on how to construct one in wood or bronze...
(as opposed to planetary) is contained in Proclus's fifth-century work Hypotyposis, where he gives instructions on how to construct one in wood or bronze...
edition, between 1926 and 1956. They comprise: Mariale Lutheranismi hypotyposis Explanatio in Genesim Quadragesimale primum Quadragesimale secundum Quadragesimale...
to Monks) Sentences for Monks Ad virginem (Exhortation to a Virgin) Hypotyposis De diversis malignis cogitationibus De magistris et disciplulis Treatise...
(in his commentary on the Almagest of that chapter), as did Proclus (Hypotyposis IV). It was a four-foot rod with a scale, a sighting hole at one end...
non-existent place”. It has been classified as a type of enargia (a synonym to “hypotyposis”), which is a “generic name for a group of figures aiming at vivid, lively...
published versions of Agathemerus's Geographia. One early one, entitled Hypotyposis Geographiae can be found in the 1697 edition published in Leiden (which...
paraitesis (abdication) as well as the ceremonial praxis (synodike) and the hypotyposis (the resolution of a synod) and the tomos (dogmatic edicts). The most...
in which she used the painting to illustrate the rhetorical figure of hypotyposis; Rembrandt's painting, with its interplay of light and dark, renders...
informatio Amsterdam Edited by Samuel Tennulius in his Agathemeris libri duo Hypotyposis geographiae Diagnosis geographiae 1672 Ps.-Clemens Romanus, Homiliae...
hierarchy, and on the limits of human life. He wrote an unpublished hypotyposis on the private spiritual life expected of the Stoudios monks. Another...
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