Prosopopoeia: the speaking figure

Reading and listening to William Baldwin

“…Prosopopoeia, the 'speaking figure' as Gavin Alexander calls it, helps us to understand 'the creation of character', and it involves, at its most basic, 'a simple trick of grammar that personifies something inanimate'. 47 It's a useful term for literary scholars to know because it helps us to distinguish clearly between the author and persona when we are reading. Yet, prosopopoeia is also a figure of address, one that 'happens', Gavin Alexander acknowledges, citing Quintilian, 'when readers perform the voices that writers have created'.…”