Problem metalepsy. Od tropu do konceptu
The Issue of Metalepsis: From Trope to Concept

Summary/Abstract: The notion of metalepsis was revived in theoretical and literary criticism as a result of the reception of Gérard Genette’s publication (1972). Its popularity was indicated by the number of publications issued in English, French or German which appeared with greater intensity especially after Genette developed his concept in 2004. In fact, what we are talking about in this case is somewhat of an ‘annexation’ of the rhetorical term by narratology. At that point, the term was rarely used outside this area of study. Lexicons and dictionaries either ignored it or most often defined it, rather superficially, following one of the rhetorical traditions, as a variant of metonymy. Almost simultaneously with Genette, critics of deconstruction (Paul de Man, Harold Bloom, and Joseph Hillis Miller), inspired by the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche’s language, introduced metalepsis into their discourse. Their theoretical ideas and interpretations, deriving from the primary rhetorical sense of metalepsis, demonstrating its independent and even dominant position in the system of tropes as the ‘figure of figures’ and one of the master tropes, were much less influential than the narratological concept. Analysing historical transformations of the concept, which is pushed to the margins of typology due to the assigned function of a ‘border figure,’ the author of the article makes a thesis on the unused rhetorical potential of this trope that is still neglected. This underexplored path leads to the concept of metalepsis as the original cognitive procedure in which, following a disregarded model of mental association, and a type of imagination, we can describe subject’s particular disposition and the structure of consciousness.

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