Ojv1, lesson 7, 2017

Intergrated Language Skills 1 Introduction to Textual Analysis Lesson 7 December 15, 2017

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Types of Metaphor 

Although there is a limited usefulness in attempting to categorize every form of metaphor you might encounter—because there would always be some we had missed, and there would always be room for disputing our classification—we will mention the types which occur frequently.

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The Extended Metaphor 

One common literary use of metaphor is the extended metaphor.

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‘The Love Song of J.Alfred Prufrock’ by T.S.Eliot uses an extended metaphor to describe fog, which is compared to a cat: 3

Example 1 The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the windowpanes, The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the windowpanes, Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening, Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains, Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys, Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap, And seeing it was a soft October night, Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.

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Explanation: ď Ž

The shared properties of cats (the vehicle of the metaphor) and the fog (the tenor of the metaphor) are yellowness (if we are prepared to accept that cats may be yellow!), playfulness, wrapping around things, pressing against glass, wriggling into corners, moving silently and curling up to sleep.

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ď Ž

These are the grounds of the metaphor, which is extended because the comparison works at more than one level: the fog shares more than one quality with a cat.

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Another example of an extended metaphor is the Alice Walker poem ‘I’m really fond’:

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Example 2 I’m really very fond of you, he said.

I don’t like fond.

It sounds like something you would tell a dog.

Give me love, or nothing.

Throw your fond in a pond, I said.

But what I felt for him was also warm, frisky, moist-mouthed, eager, and could swim away if forced to do so.

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Explanation: ď Ž

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I don’t like fond. /It sounds like something you would tell a dog is a simile; it introduces the vehicle of a dog into the poem; the narrator perceives the emotion her lover declares as more appropriate to a dog than a human.

Although she uses the image of a dog to indicate her dislike of his emotion, she then turns the image to her own ends.

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ď Ž

This is done first by suggesting that he throw [s his] fond in a pond, playing with the idea of throwing sticks for dogs.

ď Ž

Second, she elaborately compares herself to a dog, emphasizing her playfulness and her independence from him: warm, frisky, moist-mouthed, eager, and could swim away/if forced to do so.

ď Ž

This metaphor therefore is exploited at length, with the different grounds for comparison between the narrator and a dog drawn out.

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Anthropomorphic Metaphor 

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When animals, objects, or concepts are given specifically human attributes, anthropomorphism is said to have taken place.

Anthropomorphism occurs very frequently in children’s books, where trains and animals have personalities and can talk.

Animated cartoon films like Tom and Jerry are also anthropomorphic.

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ď Ž

Writers make use of this device, as in the following opening line to a sixteenth-century sonnet by Sir Philip Sidney:

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Example 3 With how sad steps, O Moon, Thou climb’st the skies.

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The narrator of the poem addresses the moon as if it were a person slowly climbing stairs.

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Another term used to describe this phenomenon is personification.

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Another poet, W.B.Yeats, describes the emotion love as a person, treading the skies like Sidney’s moon: 14

Example 4 When you are old and grey and full of sleep‌ ‌And bending down beside the glowing bars, Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled And paced upon the mountains overhead And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

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Pathetic Fallacy ď Ž

Another form of metaphor that attributes human responses to the environment is pathetic fallacy.

ď Ž

This refers to the practice of representing the world as a mirror reflecting human emotions.

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ď Ž

This was a device particularly exploited by writers in the late eighteenth century and throughout the nineteenth century, when the beauty and the power of nature was often a strong theme in literature.

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ď Ž

The effects produced can be very forceful, as the surrounding world echoes the feelings of the protagonists, as in this extract from Middlemarch, by George Eliot.

ď Ž

The characters, Dorothea and Will, who are in love with one another, believe they are parting for ever: 18

Example 5 He took her hand, and raised it to his lips with something like a sob. But he stood with his hat and gloves in the other hand and might have done for the portrait of a Royalist.

Still it was difficult to loose the hand, and Dorothea, withdrawing it in a confusion that distressed her, looked and moved away.

‘See how dark the clouds have become, and how the trees are tossed’, she said, walking towards the window with only a dim sense of what she was doing….

While he [Will] was speaking there came a flash of lightning which lit each of them up for the other—and the light seemed to be the terror of a hopeless love.

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Explanation: ď Ž

The dark clouds and the tossing trees can be read as metaphors for the unhappiness and confusion of the characters.

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A simile is used to make explicit the connection between the lightning and their hopeless love.

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The mixed metaphor ď Ž

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This is usually a less praised device; it refers to switching metaphors in the middle of a description so some kind of incongruity is produced.

To say someone was being taken on a wild goose chase up the garden path would be a mixed metaphor, or that a bottle neck is strangling the traffic flow.

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If the terms tenor, vehicle and ground are applied, what happens in a mixed metaphor is that the tenor—the subject of the metaphor— stays the same, but the vehicle and ground change.

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It is usually thought, in literary writing, to show a lack of control, or language awareness, but it can be used for deliberate effects, as in the Liz Lochhead poem which will be discussed shortly.

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The Dead Metaphor ď Ž

Another type of metaphor usually referred to with little admiration is the dead metaphor: a metaphor which has been absorbed into everyday language usage and become naturalized, so that most language users are not aware of it as a metaphor any more.

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ď Ž

ď Ž

Common examples include the foot of a bed, or the foot of a page, a table leg, the arm of a chair: usages so everyday that their metaphorical origins are forgotten.

The meaning of some words has expanded to include their metaphorical usages, as is the case for the word clear, for instance.

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The literal meaning of clear is that light can pass through, as in clear water or clear glass.

When an idea or an explanation are described as being clear, a mental process is being compared with the passage of light through something.

Is that clear? doesn’t mean can you see through it?, but metaphorically, is it comprehensible?

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ď Ž

This metaphor continues when we talk about ideas or a speaker being lucid or opaque.

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Our language is full of words which have been taken from one area of experience and used to describe another.

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It is possible to bring dead metaphors ‘back to life’, however.

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Two ways this can happen are through poetry and through politics.

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The poet Liz Lochhead is a good example of someone who takes everyday figures of speech, and makes them seem strange by breaking them down so that the reader has to think of them again, in a new way.

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In the poem ‘Bawd’ she writes: 28

Example 6 It’ll amaze you, the company I keep— and I’ll keep them at arm’s length— I’ve hauled my heart in off my sleeve.

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Explanation 

There are two metaphors which would usually be considered ‘dead’ here: to keep at arm’s length and to wear your heart on your sleeve.

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The two are combined in such a way as to call attention to themselves and to their exact phrasing. Keep is used twice, in the first line to suggest proximity, and in the second to suggest distance.

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ď Ž

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The word arm in the second line and the word sleeve in the third draw attention to themselves because they collocate when they are used in their literal senses.

The metaphorical usages of both words refer to emotional distance or availability.

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The words of the metaphors are being explored, instead of being taken for granted.

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Further on in the poem are the lines: I’ll shrug everything off the shoulder, make wisecracks, be witty off the cuff.

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ď Ž

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The process of making familiar expressions strange continues with the combination of to shrug something off and off the shoulder.

Off the shoulder is not usually a metaphor, because it is generally used literally to describe a low-cut top or dress; to shrug something off however is a dead metaphor which is usually means to ignore something.

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By splicing these two expressions, attention is drawn to these well-worn phrases and dead metaphors are resurrected—so to speak!

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Similarly attention is called to the dead metaphor off the cuff because cuff in its literal sense collocates with sleeve and arm when they are used in their literal senses.

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ď Ž

Another way we can become conscious of the literal meaning of dead metaphors is through someone, or a group of people, objecting to a particular language usage or deliberately introducing an alternative.

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This happens quite frequently, and today is often called political correctness.

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ď Ž

For example, the word black has all sorts of negative associations in English in its metaphorical usages, which are not linked with its literal meaning of a colour.

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A lot of people find expressions such as to blacken someone’s name, blackleg, blacklist, black magic, a black look, black-hearted or the black market racially offensive.

In an effort to dispel these connotations, phrases such as black is beautiful were coined. Writers such as Toni Morrison, the Nobel prize-winning black writer, use positive and beautiful images in ssociation with black skin, working against a whole tradition of metaphorical language usage.

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ď Ž

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Another area where political intervention occurs is when words develop a range of metaphorical meanings in English that are apparently non-gender specific, but where their literal meaning is gendered.

An example is the word master, in the sense of to master something, or in the sense of an academic qualification: Master of Science or of Arts (MSc/MA).

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ď Ž

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The literal meaning of master is a male person in authority, the malegendered equivalent of mistress (e.g. the master and mistress of the house).

The metaphorical meaning of master is that one has achieved a level of proficiency or expertise, and it is used of males or females: a woman can be said to have mastered the art of car maintenance, and can hold a Master of Science degree.

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ď Ž

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Comparing the metaphorical usages of master to the metaphorical uses of mistress (e.g. his wife met his mistress) provides an illustration of what typically happens to gendered terms in English.

When a male term develops metaphorical meanings, these tend to be positive, while if the female term develops metaphorical meanings, they tend to be negative (pejorative).

Master has a range of uses that are quite different from the range of uses of mistress.

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ď Ž

Another reason for becoming aware of the metaphorical ways in which words are used, therefore, is that pressure groups pick up on certain usages and draw attention to the embedded inequalities contained within them.

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