Prosopopoeia
Personification
Prosopopoeia is the figure in which inanimate things, abstract concepts, or absent or deceased persons are represented as present and alive, or as speaking and acting subjects. Invisible spiritual realities are thereby given a voice and a behaviour.
Etymology
From the Greek προσωποποιία (prosôpopoiia): prosôpon (face, person, mask) + poiein (to make). Literally: “the making of a person” or “the giving of a face.” In Latin fictio personae (the fashioning of a person). Bullinger distinguishes several forms: (1) inanimate things speak as persons, (2) absent persons are addressed as present, (3) deceased persons are represented as living.
Definition
Prosopopoeia crosses the boundary between living and lifeless, present and absent, visible and invisible. The figure makes spiritual realities concrete and vivid: creation groans, wisdom cries out, sin rules as a person, the earth trembles. Bullinger classifies this as a figure of change (Wave C) because the normal categories of person and thing are exchanged.
Biblical Examples
Creation as a waiting person (Jones: Rom. 8:19):
- Rom. 8:19-22 — “For the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God… for the creature was made subject to vanity… Because the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption… For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now”
- Bullinger: creation as a subject that waits, groans, and travails — Jones: this verse links Prosopopoeia to the manifestation of the sons of God
Wisdom as a calling woman:
- Prov. 8:1-36 — “Doth not wisdom cry? and understanding put forth her voice?… Then I was by him, as one brought up with him: and I was daily his delight, rejoicing always before him” — Wisdom speaks as a person present at creation
Nature as a responding witness:
- Ps. 114:3-7 — “The sea saw it, and fled: Jordan was driven back… Ye mountains, that ye skipped like rams; and ye little hills, like lambs?”
- Isa. 55:12 — “all the trees of the field shall clap their hands”
- Hab. 2:11 — “For the stone shall cry out of the wall, and the beam out of the timber shall answer it”
Sin and Death as ruling powers:
- Rom. 5:14 — “death reigned from Adam to Moses”
- Rom. 7:8-11 — “But sin, taking occasion by the commandment, wrought in me all manner of concupiscence… and slew me” — Sin acts as a person who enters, seizes, and kills
The souls under the altar:
- Rev. 6:10 — “And they cried with a loud voice, saying, How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood”
Related Stylistic Figures
- allegory — sustained metaphor; sometimes interwoven with Prosopopoeia
- metaphor — the simple single metaphor
- anthropopatheia — human passions attributed to God; in Prosopopoeia human attributes are assigned to non-humans
Source
E.W. Bullinger, Figures of Speech Used in the Bible (1898), pp. 861-877.