Topos
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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"The ritual of weighing the soul was an iconographic topos familiar to Christianity from the ceremony of the weighing of sins at the Last Judgement." --Flesh in the Age of Reason (2004) by Roy Porter |
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Topos (From Ancient Greek τόπος) means place. In literary theory it refers to a literary theme or motif; a rhetorical convention or formula.
Literary topos
Topos (literally "a place"; pl. topoi) referred in the context of classical Greek rhetoric to a standardised method of constructing or treating an argument. See topos in classical rhetoric.
For example, oral histories passed down from pre-historic societies contain literary aspects, characters, or settings which appear again and again in stories from ancient civilizations, religious texts, and even more modern stories. The biblical creation myths and of "the flood" are two examples, as they are repeated in other civilizations' earliest texts (see Epic of Gilgamesh or Deluge (mythology)) and are seen again and again in historical texts and references.
See also
Derived terms
- Anatopism
- Chronotope
- Dystopia
- Erotopia
- Hierotopy
- Topic
- Topography
- Topology
- Toponymy
- Utopia
- Topophilia
- Log line
- Literary topos
