Tropes, Cliches and Topoi
Posted by andyslack on 13 October 2008
This is an intriguing idea from a recent conversation with my daughter Anna, who is also of a literary bent – although she very rarely reads anything written after 1830, which doesn’t appeal to me ‘cos they don’t have rayguns.
Tropes are those ideas that crop up again and again in literature. The Dark Lord, for example, is a classic fantasy trope. The proud feline warrior race is a classic SF trope. The burned-out maverick cop is a detective story trope. A trope can be a character, a place, an object, a plot, anything.
Tropes that get overused become cliches. The damsel in distress, for instance. Cliches are so obvious that even inverting them is a trope. Have you noticed how recently in supernatural movies the chick kicks ass and the hero is the weedy nerd? That’s a trope in its own right now, because the previous square-jawed hero with a helpless female sidekick became a cliche. (That’s at the top of my mind because I just watched webisode 2 of Sanctuary.)
With me so far? Good. Anna’s observation was that the topoi never become cliches, however often you use them; these are the tropes that get used all the time, and never get old. The classic one is the arming topos, which is several thousand years old now; that scene just before the climactic fight, where the hero tools up with armour and weapons.
These things seem to be hardwired into our storytelling below the conscious level. There’s a nice list of them here. Delve into the mysteries of the Five Man Band and the Smurfette Principle, and enjoy.
