Author: DUMARSAIS (DU MARSAIS), César Chesneau
Title: Traité des tropes. Pour servir d'introduction à la rhetorique et à la logique . . . Nouvelle édition publiée par Mr. Formey.
Description: Leipsic: chez la Veuve Gaspard Fritsch, 1757. 8vo. [12], 274, [2]p. Contemporary calf, gold-tooled spine, red-edged leaves. Edges and corners worn, with some wear at head and foot of spine. **** Dumarsais's Des tropes, a study of the modification of meaning, was entirely neglected when it first appeared in 1730. Despite a second edition in 1757, the book only became famous at the end of the century and at the beginning of the next. Des tropes can be viewed as a branch of linguistic study devoted to the figurative use of words; the first part of the book relates this subject to Dumarsais's theory of knowledge and theory of the simplest use of signs; there is further discussion on the theory of liaison des idées. The second part deals with particular tropes: metonymy, hyperbole, metaphor, euphemism; and in the third part Dumarsais discusses such questions as 'sens literal', sens spirituel', 'sens abstrait' and 'sens concret'. See J.S. Spink, Philosophical speculation and literary technique: the systematic context of Du Marsais's 'Des tropes', in Voltaire and his world: studies presented to W.H. Barber, pp.241-60.

Keywords: tropes, French, language, philology antiquarian


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