Prosopopoeia identifies the specific rhetorical act of giving a voice to and speaking in the name of another person or an inanimate object. Greek in origin, prosopopoeia literally means “to make” (
poeien) a “face” or “person” (
prosopon) through the art, skill, or craft of rhetoric (See Lanham 123).
Perhaps the most popular and enduring use of prosopopoeia is to make an absent or dead person present through speech. According to Abraham Fraunce in The Arcadian Rhetorike (1588), prosopopoeia is “a fayning of any person, when in our speech we represent the person... and make it speake as though he were in the present” (85, 86). This form of oratorical performance, of role-playing, of counterfeiting presence, is central to A Mirror for Magistrates (1559), a book of ghostly
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Citation: Sturgeon, Elizabeth M.. "Prosopopoeia". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 14 July 2007 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/stopics.php?rec=true&UID=1734, accessed 27 April 2024.]
