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New Critical Idiom
Metaphor
Metaphor is a central concept in literary studies, but it is also prevalent in everyday language and speech. Recent literary theories such as postmodernism and deconstruction have transformed the study of the text and revolutionized our thinking about metaphor. In this fascinating volume, David This comprehensive and engaging book emphasizes the significance of metaphor to literary studies, as well as its relevance to cultural studies, linguistics and philosophy.
176 pages, Paperback
First published June 12, 2007
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May 21, 2012
This is an interesting introduction to the problem of metaphor. There is a nice bit towards the start of this where someone says that in the early part of the 20th century no one was basically interested in metaphor as anything but a literary device and now it has become a booming field, so much so that if the rate of increase continues in 50 years time here will be more people studying metaphor than are people alive on the planet. In many ways I want to say you could probably get away with reading Metaphors We Live By, rather than this one, although, this one does cover quite different ground and takes a much broader view in many ways.
Aristotle liked metaphors, but thought of them mostly as ornamentation. So, although he considered the kinds of people who could come up with an original metaphor as geniuses, they were still considered to have a rather peripheral role in thinking. Today that is no longer the case – many people now hold the view that metaphor is pretty much all we do and that even the most apparently ‘literal’ of language is, of its own nature, still metaphorical and thus problematic in the ways that all metaphors can be.
So, what are we talking about here? I guess the standard way of looking at a metaphor is to differentiate it from a simile – he is like a lion (simile), he is a lion (metaphor). Except this book sees simile as a limited case of metaphor. Also viewed as a limited case of metaphor is metonymy (where a part is taken to stand in for the whole – I’ll buy your fifty head of cattle – when really I’m going to buy all of the cows, not just their heads).
Often people feel that if we were to get rid of this ‘flowery’ language then perhaps at the expense of some of the ‘beauty’ of language we would gain much clarity. You know, why don't we just talk about cows (rather than their heads), or talk about aggressive men, rather than referring to them as lions. The problem is that of denotation and connotation. There are things we can denote literally, but even so this is not all of the meaning so called flowery language gives us. There is a nice part of this book where he quotes an article from a left-leaning newspaper which talks about legal action being taken out against ‘tobacco giants’. He says we could easily enough change this to legal action being taken against large tobacco companies. The problem is that this misses all of the interesting things that are not literally being said in the metaphor ‘giants’ that we, nevertheless, still hear. Although, perhaps we only hear this subconsciously or rather with your gut rather than our ears.
A giant is something that is dangerous and malevolent. It is something that needs to be destroyed and Jack – the little guy on the right side – is just the person to do just that. That this nicely matches the world view of the typical reader of this left-leaning publication is as good a reason for picking such a metaphor as any other.
There is a sense in which these connotations are chosen for us by the language that springs to mind as we speak – rather than us choosing these connotations. Stuff just ‘sounds’ right and that rightness is a function of the harmony brought into being when the connotations of the metaphors behind our utterances match up.
What is interesting in this book is his use of both serious bits of literature and bits from more profane writing. So, he quotes bits of Plath and Blake, but also Ian Fleming and Yann Martell – although he seems quite fond of the metaphorical structure of The Life of Pi. He was chatting away about Daddy, by Plath and I suddenly realised something about the last line of that I’d never quite thought about before. “Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I’m through.” What I’d never thought about before was the idea that if she is killing her father, “Daddy, I have had to kill you” then, in a certain sense she is making herself a bastard – in the sense of being without a legitimate father. I’ve never been all that good at the obvious, I’m afraid.
Which brings me nicely to the stuff in this on psychoanalysis – which makes it curious that metaphor took quite so long to get going, given Freud’s obsessions with true meaning being that which is just below the surface of the images thrown up in dreams. And isn’t metaphor just that, a kind of seeing below the surface at what is ‘really’ going on in a text.
This then brings us to Derrida in the text and the near infinite possibilities of interpreting metaphors and how this then implies the impossibility of a single reading of a text, but rather a hall of mirrors where the strings of connotations go on in nearly endless directions.
It is probably best not to read books about metaphor. For one thing, it makes the writer far too concerned about the kinds of metaphors they are picking in their writing (is picking a good metaphor here or would gleaning be better?) Like I said, I think I got more out of Metaphors We Live By, but this is an interesting companion to that book particularly for the history of the concept and how it has changed over the years.
Aristotle liked metaphors, but thought of them mostly as ornamentation. So, although he considered the kinds of people who could come up with an original metaphor as geniuses, they were still considered to have a rather peripheral role in thinking. Today that is no longer the case – many people now hold the view that metaphor is pretty much all we do and that even the most apparently ‘literal’ of language is, of its own nature, still metaphorical and thus problematic in the ways that all metaphors can be.
So, what are we talking about here? I guess the standard way of looking at a metaphor is to differentiate it from a simile – he is like a lion (simile), he is a lion (metaphor). Except this book sees simile as a limited case of metaphor. Also viewed as a limited case of metaphor is metonymy (where a part is taken to stand in for the whole – I’ll buy your fifty head of cattle – when really I’m going to buy all of the cows, not just their heads).
Often people feel that if we were to get rid of this ‘flowery’ language then perhaps at the expense of some of the ‘beauty’ of language we would gain much clarity. You know, why don't we just talk about cows (rather than their heads), or talk about aggressive men, rather than referring to them as lions. The problem is that of denotation and connotation. There are things we can denote literally, but even so this is not all of the meaning so called flowery language gives us. There is a nice part of this book where he quotes an article from a left-leaning newspaper which talks about legal action being taken out against ‘tobacco giants’. He says we could easily enough change this to legal action being taken against large tobacco companies. The problem is that this misses all of the interesting things that are not literally being said in the metaphor ‘giants’ that we, nevertheless, still hear. Although, perhaps we only hear this subconsciously or rather with your gut rather than our ears.
A giant is something that is dangerous and malevolent. It is something that needs to be destroyed and Jack – the little guy on the right side – is just the person to do just that. That this nicely matches the world view of the typical reader of this left-leaning publication is as good a reason for picking such a metaphor as any other.
There is a sense in which these connotations are chosen for us by the language that springs to mind as we speak – rather than us choosing these connotations. Stuff just ‘sounds’ right and that rightness is a function of the harmony brought into being when the connotations of the metaphors behind our utterances match up.
What is interesting in this book is his use of both serious bits of literature and bits from more profane writing. So, he quotes bits of Plath and Blake, but also Ian Fleming and Yann Martell – although he seems quite fond of the metaphorical structure of The Life of Pi. He was chatting away about Daddy, by Plath and I suddenly realised something about the last line of that I’d never quite thought about before. “Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I’m through.” What I’d never thought about before was the idea that if she is killing her father, “Daddy, I have had to kill you” then, in a certain sense she is making herself a bastard – in the sense of being without a legitimate father. I’ve never been all that good at the obvious, I’m afraid.
Which brings me nicely to the stuff in this on psychoanalysis – which makes it curious that metaphor took quite so long to get going, given Freud’s obsessions with true meaning being that which is just below the surface of the images thrown up in dreams. And isn’t metaphor just that, a kind of seeing below the surface at what is ‘really’ going on in a text.
This then brings us to Derrida in the text and the near infinite possibilities of interpreting metaphors and how this then implies the impossibility of a single reading of a text, but rather a hall of mirrors where the strings of connotations go on in nearly endless directions.
It is probably best not to read books about metaphor. For one thing, it makes the writer far too concerned about the kinds of metaphors they are picking in their writing (is picking a good metaphor here or would gleaning be better?) Like I said, I think I got more out of Metaphors We Live By, but this is an interesting companion to that book particularly for the history of the concept and how it has changed over the years.
March 3, 2021
This book was a fantastic read, filled with a combination of clear writing and insightful examples. Whilst heavily biased towards poetry, it does refer to a few novels, advertising campaigns, and even a public sculpture installation to make its case.
At its most basic, A metaphor is "an offering of perceived resemblances" and "the way in which we bind things together" to improve our understanding. But, as Punter also notes, vivid and extended metaphors are much more than this. He demonstrates over and over the way that metaphors are tricky things that can 'nest' inside one another, as a series of babushka dolls or Churchill's quote about enigmas wrapped in riddles. For example, when William Congreve describes writer's block with the phrase, 'Invention flags, his brain goes muddy, // and black despair succeeds brown study," it is easy to imagine a dark quagmire of regret. However, if we look look-again, certain words (flags / succeeds) trick our mind into thinking the reverse; a triumphant victory over a hard-fought battlefield. For me, the example is a creative representation of non-creativity – hence it is deservedly both victory and quagmire both.
Perhaps my favourite take-away from this book comes from a Joseph Conrad quote in Heart of Darkness (1902), where the narrator is explaining that the heart of a story likes not, kernel-like inside a cracked shell waiting to be discovered, but on the outside, akin to a glow. Punter sees this as a valid metaphor of metaphor; that meaning is rarely 'unpacked' from a metaphor but is an integral part of the metaphor overall. When we attempt to 'open' a metaphor up for review, what we find is generally 'paltry and colourless.' By extrapolation, architectural (metaphorical) meaning is not really 'inside' the building or design; it is the design itself – not a heart of darkness or light, but a halo, hazy or bright. In other words, just as 'dissecting' something leaves us with a pile of offal rather than a magical creature, so too the more we try to interrogate and articulate metaphorical architecture, the sooner we are left with something lesser rather than greater.
Moreover, separate from the metaphor's complexity is the complexity of both latent and manifest meanings. Overall it highlights that metaphor is contextual. Just as 'a rose' can mean different things to different people, in different countries, at different times, metaphor is similarly effected by spatiotemporal considerations. Extended metaphors can become allegories (or whole literary genres such as 'Gothic'), and even symbols can be reframed to be seen as "powerful and multivalent metaphors," – the line between the two is "tentative and shifting."
'Dead' metaphors he acknowledges as 'embedded' in language but suggests that they can be "revivified" through tricks such as juxtaposition. It reminds me of the idea of placing a hypothermic, lifeless body skin-to-skin against a warm-blooded person such that the heat and energy of one can transfer to the other. Given that metaphors function via the collocation and convergence of ideas, the notion that a metaphor can likewise be re-metaphorised is a genuinely appealing one.
He suggests that ironic metaphors can't be discussed as doing so 'unbalances' the 'delicate poise that sustains metaphor' – which is similar to what Jencks says about architectural jokes. Explaining them ruins their magic, as it were. Similarly, he notes that even trying to define a metaphor places us on 'unstable' ground, as it becomes almost impossible not to use a metaphor to describe a metaphor. Overall, Punter often alludes to the 'shifty' 'precariousness' of metaphor, cross-referencing it to Terry Pratchard's reference to metaphor as a "wossname" and noting that perhaps the heart of metaphor is learning that it has no name. He also suggests that it's all a game – "perhaps all play is metaphor, perhaps all metaphor is play."
In his chapter on East versus West, he is cautious not to draw neat distinctions, giving examples from both realms to demonstrate they can be similar and different. However, he notes that there is a trend towards parallelism in the West and convergence in the East. In other words, the West tends to draw comparisons between the tenor and vehicle while also keeping them separate ('my house is a pigsty'). On the other hand, the East (to borrow a reverse-James Bond idea) is stirred, not shaken, such that the subject and object becoming one ('am I the dreamer or the dream?'). Parallelism and convergence become two key terms when considering metaphors, regardless of origin.
The idea of 'public' metaphors was also fascinating, drawing in examples from politicians and advertisers whose use of metaphors is "nothing less than an attempt to rewire the brain, if only on a temporary basis." He gives the example of the city of Bristol putting up a 'sail' sculpture to remind people of their seafaring past, complete with associations of adventure and – whilst in a 'sleight of hand' mistruth-smuggling moment, and they draw attention away from the cities history in slave and tobacco trade. It is a post-colonial rewriting through powerful metaphorical associations. The spatial-temporal side of metaphor is also referred to. Punter is clear that a metaphor's power depends on a shared understanding of associations, which we could call a collective-consciousness. Without that, the metaphor falls flat, is 'foreign' and lost in translation.
Whilst metaphor's role is to transfer meaning, this book explains such an idea is the bare minimum of what metaphor is capable of. If a 'good' metaphor can transfer meaning, a 'great' metaphor can transcend it. By transcend, I mean elevate or eliminate meaning. A basic metaphor adds clarity, but a genuinely vivid one becomes ambiguous, enigmatic, paradoxical. As Punter says, when we read Coleridge's poem Kubla Khan 1798 'stately pleasure-dome decree' "we may find ourselves here to be in the presence of metaphor, but precisely what that metaphor is may well remain opaque."
The only regret I have is that he didn't elaborate on Derrida's notion of 'differance,' and I only have a couple of complaints that I can make as an early researcher into metaphor. Firstly, as insightful as his poetry reviews can be, there are moments when he seems to make obvious mistakes. In his review of Blake's poem 'The Sick Rose,' he speaks of a couple of interpretations of the worm defiling the bloom but misses the most glaring one (deflowering). Later, in his review of the fabulous poem about Martian visitation, he refers to the bodiless visitors even though the poem uses the words 'hand in hand' and 'squeezed my arm'.
The second complaint is perhaps less petty. In his review of the early days of classical metaphor literature, he discusses Aristotle's view of metaphor as ornamentation in 'Poetics'. This is as it should be. However, he misses the whole other reference to metaphor that Aristotle makes in his work 'Rhetoric', which refers to metaphor as a more integral part of language to fill a gap in our linguistic repertoire. The latter is a need, the first a want. This seems a serious omission because his thesis is that metaphor tended to be ornamental and then a more integral part of language, around the time of the Romantic poets through the Structuralists, psychoanalysts, deconstructivists, up until today. That seems to be too neat a distinction, and not how I understand it. My reading is that the two uses of metaphor – let's call them the coat and broach approach – have been around as long as metaphor has. Aristotle points to the two versions in two separate books, and even my shallow research has shown a mix and match approach throughout the ages. All that has changed is the orientation of the review. Most early literary reviewers focused on the brooch, and later researchers focused on the coat. I believe that the two have always been present; whether it's Shakespeare's 'Tempest' or the more modern 'Maze Runner' series, extended metaphors are alluded to from the title and the structure, whilst smaller metaphorical tropes can be found throughout, in descriptions of people or places.
Regardless, I found this book a fascinating and beneficial read, which presents metaphor as something powerful and dangerous, that can have a tremendous influence over us, even when it does not always seem to have full control of itself.
At its most basic, A metaphor is "an offering of perceived resemblances" and "the way in which we bind things together" to improve our understanding. But, as Punter also notes, vivid and extended metaphors are much more than this. He demonstrates over and over the way that metaphors are tricky things that can 'nest' inside one another, as a series of babushka dolls or Churchill's quote about enigmas wrapped in riddles. For example, when William Congreve describes writer's block with the phrase, 'Invention flags, his brain goes muddy, // and black despair succeeds brown study," it is easy to imagine a dark quagmire of regret. However, if we look look-again, certain words (flags / succeeds) trick our mind into thinking the reverse; a triumphant victory over a hard-fought battlefield. For me, the example is a creative representation of non-creativity – hence it is deservedly both victory and quagmire both.
Perhaps my favourite take-away from this book comes from a Joseph Conrad quote in Heart of Darkness (1902), where the narrator is explaining that the heart of a story likes not, kernel-like inside a cracked shell waiting to be discovered, but on the outside, akin to a glow. Punter sees this as a valid metaphor of metaphor; that meaning is rarely 'unpacked' from a metaphor but is an integral part of the metaphor overall. When we attempt to 'open' a metaphor up for review, what we find is generally 'paltry and colourless.' By extrapolation, architectural (metaphorical) meaning is not really 'inside' the building or design; it is the design itself – not a heart of darkness or light, but a halo, hazy or bright. In other words, just as 'dissecting' something leaves us with a pile of offal rather than a magical creature, so too the more we try to interrogate and articulate metaphorical architecture, the sooner we are left with something lesser rather than greater.
Moreover, separate from the metaphor's complexity is the complexity of both latent and manifest meanings. Overall it highlights that metaphor is contextual. Just as 'a rose' can mean different things to different people, in different countries, at different times, metaphor is similarly effected by spatiotemporal considerations. Extended metaphors can become allegories (or whole literary genres such as 'Gothic'), and even symbols can be reframed to be seen as "powerful and multivalent metaphors," – the line between the two is "tentative and shifting."
'Dead' metaphors he acknowledges as 'embedded' in language but suggests that they can be "revivified" through tricks such as juxtaposition. It reminds me of the idea of placing a hypothermic, lifeless body skin-to-skin against a warm-blooded person such that the heat and energy of one can transfer to the other. Given that metaphors function via the collocation and convergence of ideas, the notion that a metaphor can likewise be re-metaphorised is a genuinely appealing one.
He suggests that ironic metaphors can't be discussed as doing so 'unbalances' the 'delicate poise that sustains metaphor' – which is similar to what Jencks says about architectural jokes. Explaining them ruins their magic, as it were. Similarly, he notes that even trying to define a metaphor places us on 'unstable' ground, as it becomes almost impossible not to use a metaphor to describe a metaphor. Overall, Punter often alludes to the 'shifty' 'precariousness' of metaphor, cross-referencing it to Terry Pratchard's reference to metaphor as a "wossname" and noting that perhaps the heart of metaphor is learning that it has no name. He also suggests that it's all a game – "perhaps all play is metaphor, perhaps all metaphor is play."
In his chapter on East versus West, he is cautious not to draw neat distinctions, giving examples from both realms to demonstrate they can be similar and different. However, he notes that there is a trend towards parallelism in the West and convergence in the East. In other words, the West tends to draw comparisons between the tenor and vehicle while also keeping them separate ('my house is a pigsty'). On the other hand, the East (to borrow a reverse-James Bond idea) is stirred, not shaken, such that the subject and object becoming one ('am I the dreamer or the dream?'). Parallelism and convergence become two key terms when considering metaphors, regardless of origin.
The idea of 'public' metaphors was also fascinating, drawing in examples from politicians and advertisers whose use of metaphors is "nothing less than an attempt to rewire the brain, if only on a temporary basis." He gives the example of the city of Bristol putting up a 'sail' sculpture to remind people of their seafaring past, complete with associations of adventure and – whilst in a 'sleight of hand' mistruth-smuggling moment, and they draw attention away from the cities history in slave and tobacco trade. It is a post-colonial rewriting through powerful metaphorical associations. The spatial-temporal side of metaphor is also referred to. Punter is clear that a metaphor's power depends on a shared understanding of associations, which we could call a collective-consciousness. Without that, the metaphor falls flat, is 'foreign' and lost in translation.
Whilst metaphor's role is to transfer meaning, this book explains such an idea is the bare minimum of what metaphor is capable of. If a 'good' metaphor can transfer meaning, a 'great' metaphor can transcend it. By transcend, I mean elevate or eliminate meaning. A basic metaphor adds clarity, but a genuinely vivid one becomes ambiguous, enigmatic, paradoxical. As Punter says, when we read Coleridge's poem Kubla Khan 1798 'stately pleasure-dome decree' "we may find ourselves here to be in the presence of metaphor, but precisely what that metaphor is may well remain opaque."
The only regret I have is that he didn't elaborate on Derrida's notion of 'differance,' and I only have a couple of complaints that I can make as an early researcher into metaphor. Firstly, as insightful as his poetry reviews can be, there are moments when he seems to make obvious mistakes. In his review of Blake's poem 'The Sick Rose,' he speaks of a couple of interpretations of the worm defiling the bloom but misses the most glaring one (deflowering). Later, in his review of the fabulous poem about Martian visitation, he refers to the bodiless visitors even though the poem uses the words 'hand in hand' and 'squeezed my arm'.
The second complaint is perhaps less petty. In his review of the early days of classical metaphor literature, he discusses Aristotle's view of metaphor as ornamentation in 'Poetics'. This is as it should be. However, he misses the whole other reference to metaphor that Aristotle makes in his work 'Rhetoric', which refers to metaphor as a more integral part of language to fill a gap in our linguistic repertoire. The latter is a need, the first a want. This seems a serious omission because his thesis is that metaphor tended to be ornamental and then a more integral part of language, around the time of the Romantic poets through the Structuralists, psychoanalysts, deconstructivists, up until today. That seems to be too neat a distinction, and not how I understand it. My reading is that the two uses of metaphor – let's call them the coat and broach approach – have been around as long as metaphor has. Aristotle points to the two versions in two separate books, and even my shallow research has shown a mix and match approach throughout the ages. All that has changed is the orientation of the review. Most early literary reviewers focused on the brooch, and later researchers focused on the coat. I believe that the two have always been present; whether it's Shakespeare's 'Tempest' or the more modern 'Maze Runner' series, extended metaphors are alluded to from the title and the structure, whilst smaller metaphorical tropes can be found throughout, in descriptions of people or places.
Regardless, I found this book a fascinating and beneficial read, which presents metaphor as something powerful and dangerous, that can have a tremendous influence over us, even when it does not always seem to have full control of itself.
March 2, 2016
Overall this book was pretty interesting and informative. The analysis of Life of Pi ruined the ending for me, but also made me want to read it, so can't count that against it. It was a little repetitive, but I was only assigned a few chapters of the book for school and I read the whole thing. I read the whole thing, so I'm counting that as a positive. Definitely a great theory book.
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