Prosopopoeia
Figures of speechGiving speech to an absent person, the dead, an abstraction or a thing: making the Nation, Nature or a lost one speak.
Example
Letting the childhood house speak: "I saw them born; I watched them leave."
Prosopopoeia puts speech in the mouth of what does not speak: the dead, the absent, an allegory, an object, an institution. It goes beyond personification — no longer lending human gestures but an entire voice, often in direct speech.
A solemn figure by tradition (orators made the Fatherland or the ancestors speak), it keeps a singular power in fiction: a chapter spoken by a house, a river or a dead woman radically changes the reading pact. It demands total commitment — a timid prosopopoeia falls flat, because readers grant speech only to voices that own it.
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