Sermocinatio
The sermocinatio (from Latin sermo , 'speech') is a rhetorical figure in which a person who is not present is presented as present and a certain speech is placed in the mouth or a certain action is assumed. Depending on the understanding of the term, this also includes the prosopoly in the narrower sense, i.e. the speech of personified abstracts or objects.
Examples:
- “What would your mother say if she were still alive? She would wash your head and say: 'Don't you think that ...' "
- “This fatherland, Catiline, negotiates with you and speaks to you in secret, so to speak: 'For a number of years there has been no more crime that you did not commit, no more outrage will happen without you. [...] '"(Cicero, 1st speech against Catiline )
literature
- H. Lausberg: Handbook of literary rhetoric . 2nd Edition. Max Huber Verlag, Munich 1973.
- D. Burdorf [and a.] (Ed.): Metzler Lexikon der Literatur . 3. Edition. Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 2007.