Yes; there were two broad categories of rhetorical figures; there were tropes and there were schemes. A scheme is a rhetorical figure that describes a pattern in language (say of repetition, or duplication or order) The root of Trope in Greek means "[a] turn," and it's usually treated in manuals of rhetoric as a rhetorical figure that, rather than just being a pattern (like say chiasmus) a trope is a figure that actually changes the meaning of the work/sentence. It's a slippery distinction though, because some figures described as schemes, like zeugma also change the meaning of the sentence or phrase.
On a personal level, I first noticed trope being used for a narrative pattern (some were clearly just motifs; others were chains of motifs) in 2005.
I presented a paper about what was a new use of trope at a conference in 2005. It was, back then, deeply weird to see a term used mostly by musicologists (trope is also a musical term particularly associated with chant, and via chant transferred to the early religious dramas performed at churches; the most famous of these is the quem quaeritis trope/early drama which takes a line from the Easter Mass (Whom do you seek?) when the Marys visit Christ's empty tomb, and discover via conversing with an angel that Christ has risen. The tropes took this fragment from the mass and turned it into a mini drama.
My hypothesis is that this use of trope in medieval music and drama (there are other tropes; quem quaeritis is just the most famous and numerous one) became extended to cover the current use,
I've (mostly) stopped grumbling about it. Language changes, I'd best change with it.
Nice to have a word for this concept, though.
