Metaphor
 

It is a rainy day in Sweden, so what I can do to get out of housework. To talk to my fellows and ask their opinions seems a good idea.

I've been reading up on theories of metaphor, because I want to know more. I've gone through the books I already have and ordered some new ones.

I am interested in how Spherians think about metaphor, how they employ them (or don't), or any excellent metaphors that anyone wishes to quote.

To get the ball rolling, I'll just excerpt from M.H. Abrahms "A Glossary of Literary Terms" a brief discussion of competing theories of metaphor. (Only naming them, without M.H.A.'s discussion.)

Metaphors, Theories of.

1. similarity view. (by which he means Aristotle.)

2. The interaction view. (I.A. Richards, i.e. vehicle and tenor. Also Max Black, system of associated commonplaces).

3. pragmatic view. (Donald Davidson, pragmatic not semantic. John Searle, speech-act theory).

4. cognitive (or conceptual theory): (George Lakoff and Mark Turner), mapping conceptual domains.

MHA doesn't discuss them but I've also been peeking at Julia Kristeva, and Paul Ricoeur, alas in a second-hand way, i.e. referencing them through others. But I've ordered the relevant books, along with some others that seemed interesting.

I'm especially interested in the question of "when is a metaphor dead, and can it be revived, and if so how?! But I don't want to shunt this into a narrow corral, so free association, folks, all thoughts are welcome.

Don Paterson's "The Empty Image: a new model of the poetic trope" used to be on his site, but it's gone now. A shame. I've a few misc quotes and a page about metaphor/simile with examples and further reading.

Hi Janice,
Would you mind letting me know what a Spherian is?
Thanks,
Jonathan

You're one now, Jonathan. Welcome to the Sphere.

David R.

A Spherian is a member of Eratosphere, a metonym, as it were.

Welcome to the Sphere, Jonathan, you are now a Spherian.

Great topic, Janice. I'll be back to this thread but for now I'll just say that I'm fond of thinking of the topic along the lines of Baudelaire in his famous poem "Correspondences." What did the postman say to the Neruda character in that film Il postino? "Everything is a metaphor for everything else" (or something like that). And how the mother of the girl he was writing love poems for was terrified by the power of metaphor over her daughter. That's the kind of metaphor that is definitely not dead.

Baudelaire's poem is certainly a contact point.

Good sighting about Il Postino. That was a lovely movie. Have you also read the novel, Antonio Skármeta? I have it in Swedish translation.

A rich topic, Janice.

In Dave Mason's book Western Wind, in the chapter on metaphor and simile, he has a photograph of a Greek delivery truck with the word METΑΦΟΡΑ on the side.

Emerson, of course, is always reaching for the next metaphor himself, and so it would be hard to pin him down to a straightforward answer to "if so, how?!" But the start of an answer, at least, is implicit in his famous definition. If language is fossil poetry--dead metaphor--then making it live again is no more than returning our attention to that original "brilliant picture," away from surface meanings and the habits of linguistic convention, and back to the moment the word first "symbolized the world."

A metaphor, etymologically speaking, is a "carrying over" or "carrying across," but even knowing that obscure little fact does little to bring the moment of symbolic insight back to life. At that rate, we're stuck at the level of mere intellection. But let a poet, grizzled and icy-eyed, come down to the valley across the high mountain passes, laden with a precious cargo of vision in a battered old pack, and you have metaphor again . . . as alive and kicking as ever.

Naturally, not every metaphor need be etymological. But Emerson's great insight, I believe, was to remind us that all etymology is metaphorical. Language itself, then--there right under our noses (under our tongues!)--is a boundless source of metaphorical insight and inspiration, if only we choose to look beneath the surfaces of the words we use everyday. Listen to the words, as old Ralph Waldo himself might have put it. Listen to what they have to say.

P.G. Wodehouse is a dab hand at dead metaphor revival. As here:

I forget how the subject arose, but I remember Jeeves once saying that sleep knits up the ravelled sleave of care. Balm of hurt minds, he described it as. The idea being, I took it, that if things are getting sticky, they tend to seem less glutinous after you've had your eight hours.