Hawkes - Metaphor

to ANN

This volume is one of a series of short studies, each dealing with a single key item, or a group of two or three key items, in our critical vocabulary. The purpose of the series differs from that served by the standard glossaries of literary terms. Many terms are adequately defined for the needs of students by the brief entries in these glossaries, and such terms will not be the subjects of studies in the present series. But there are other terms which cannot be made familiar by means of compact definitions. Students need to grow accustomed to them through simple and straightforward but reasonably full discussions of them. The purpose of this series is to provide such discussions.

Some of the terms in question refer to literary movements (e.g., Romanticism, Aestheticism, etc.), others to literary kinds (e.g., Comedy, Epic, etc.), and still others to stylistic features (e.g., Irony, The Conceit, etc.). Because of this diversity of subject matter, no attempt has been made to impose a uniform pattern upon the studies. But all authors have tried to provide as full illustrative quotation as possible, to make reference whenever appropriate to more than one literature, and to compose their studies in such a way as to guide readers towards the short bibliographies in which they have made suggestions for further reading.

John D. Jump

University of Manchester

I should like to thank Professor John D. Jump for his encouragement over a long period. Also several of my colleagues at University College, Cardiff kindly listened to or read sections of this material and made extremely helpful comments on it: in particular Nick Fisher of the Department of Classics, and G. Ingli James, Peter Garside and Robin Moffat of the Department of English. They will know that I am grateful to them.

A large portion of this book was written whilst I was in the United States in the summer of 1971, as a visiting professor at Rutgers University. My thanks must go to Professor Maurice Charney and his wife Hanna, whose kindly acumen and dazzling hospitality deserve a better relic, and to Professor Daniel Howard whose benevolence made my trip possible. The friendship of Louis and Joan Slovinsky and of Bob and Arlene Trudell proved powerfully sustaining. My greatest debt of gratitude remains, as ever, to my wife.

Finally, I must thank my argumentative students who will be the first to recognize the extent to which, over the years, I have become the vehicle to their tenor.

T.H.

The degrees of metaphor. The absolute object slightly turned is a metaphor of the object

(Wallace Stevens)

The word metaphor comes from the Greek word metaphora derived from meta meaning over, and pherein, to carry. It refers to a particular set of linguistic processes whereby aspects of one object are carried over or transferred to another object, so that the second object is spoken of as if it were the first. There are various types of metaphor, and the number of objects involved can vary, but the general procedure of transference remains the same:

Awake! for Morning in the Bowl of Night

Has flung the stone that puts the stars to flight.

(Edward FitzGerald, The Rubiyt of Omar Khayym)