Understanding and Teaching literary TROPES

Literary tropes can be a difficult device to teach.  Why?  Because:

1. We have to stop and think for a second about where they fit into the literary world. 

2. We know them so well that they’ve become a subconscious part of our enjoyment of novels and films!

Let's have a look at how we can teach and students about literary tropes.

Literary traditions – genres – tropes – stereotypes

Here’s where we can get into a pickle!  This diagram below will help!

For a more detailed version of this infographic, and to keep up-to-date with more teacher help, click HERE!

Categorise tropes to make them easier for students to understand.

Have students list tropes they’d expect to see in different genre under the elements of literature.  I like to use the following categories.  Here, we’ve listed a few of the tropes you’d expect to find in a fantasy.

A visual scrapbook

While many of us are trying to AVOID students working on devices these days (yay!), those laptops have their uses.  Have students make a visual scrapbook of common tropes, the tropes of their favourite genre, or the tropes in a text they’re studying in class.  Later, they can note some of the ideas about portrayal, purpose and stereotyping we discuss below.

To watch/listen - literary traditions, genres, tropes, stereotypes etc - click here.

Making comparisons

Help students think critically about tropes by:

ONE:

Comparing the tropes used in a single genre by more well-known literary traditions.  For example: the tropes used in horror stories of:

• The Victorian Gothic tradition – eg: gargoyles, vampires, dark and damp concrete buildings

• Indigenous traditions – eg: humans confronted with the wrath of the gods, magical creatures, ancestors, the environment (eg: volcanoes).

• Modern literature – eg: devastated cities, killer viruses, rogue AI.

TWO:

Comparing traditional indigenous stories with stories by indigenous people of the modern day.  For example:

• Traditional Indigenous stories – eg: worlds beyond (eg: the heavens, underground, the dream world), magical transformations and shape-shifting, gods and demi-gods, tricksters, proud warriors, the land as a living ancestry, cyclical time where past, present and future are inter-connected.  Stories told orally or performed.

• Indigenous works of the modern renaissance – eg: the conflicted, lost character searching for identity and belonging, community and extended family involvement, connections to the land and ancestors, the retelling of well-known events from an indigenous perspective.  Stories recorded in print or film.

THREE:

Comparing the way a single aspect has been/is represented by different tropes across literary traditions (or across genre for that matter).  Look at the way women have been portrayed for example – from commodity, to femme fatal, to damsel in distress, housewife, nasty businesswoman, warrior... 

Discuss how stories – and the tropes in them – represent society.

Stories represent how people view the world.  They also perpetuate beliefs.  It becomes a bit of a catch-22 situation.

Get serious about purpose and portrayal. 

When studying a class text, ask students:

• What group (of people) a particular trope represents.

• What the trope suggests about that group of people.

• To what extent a trope challenges or reinforces a stereotype.

• To what extent a trope is relatable/unrelatable.

• What tropes suggest about the society of that time (that literary tradition) – eg: the depictions of men and women in Austen or Bronte novels!

• Why the creator has depicted that group with that particular trope – ie, why the creator thinks they should be portrayed in this way.

• How the group portrayed by that trope feels about that portrayal.

• Why a trope might be popular or unpopular with audiences ‘then’ and ‘now’.

If students struggle to understand how tropes portray, and often stereotype groups of people, have them consider the way women have been depicted over the centuries – the femme fatal, the damsel in distress, the evil stepmother, the warrior...

Get students’ opinions on tropes.

What’s their favourite genre? What tropes do they like to see in these genre?  Is this why they like that genre?

What if their favourite genre had few or none of the tropes they expected to see?

If they were represented as a trope, what would that trope be like?  Have students draw and label or describe their trope.

Enjoy adding more depth to your text studies.  Tropes are a fabulous way to tease out critical thinking in our teens and they give students a tool with which to discuss deeper ideas in essays.  Win-win!

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