{"id":29638,"date":"2012-06-20T15:14:39","date_gmt":"2012-06-20T19:14:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fryeblog.blog.lib.mcmaster.ca\/?p=29638"},"modified":"2012-06-20T15:14:39","modified_gmt":"2012-06-20T19:14:39","slug":"whats-a-meta-for","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/macblog.mcmaster.ca\/fryeblog\/2012\/06\/20\/whats-a-meta-for\/","title":{"rendered":"What\u2019s a Meta For?"},"content":{"rendered":"

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The Reynolds Lecture for 2012, presented at Emory & Henry College, reflects on Frye’s view of metaphor only toward the end,\u00a0 I’ve often felt that theories of metaphor–at least those I’m familiar with–turn out to be founded on principles of similarity, comparison, analogy, or likeness.\u00a0 Frye’s theory is unique in that it’s founded on sameness or identity.\u00a0 I try to consider some of the implications of that view in the conclusion of the lecture.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

What\u2019s a Meta For?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Reynolds Lecture, Emory & Henry College, 28 March 2012<\/em><\/p>\n

Robert D. Denham<\/p>\n

It goes without saying, a phrase we use to mean that we should say at once, how honored I am to be the Reynolds Lecturer for 2012 and on the occasion of the 175th anniversary of the founding of Emory & Henry College, where I worked and played for some twenty\u2011three years.\u00a0 Early on in my tenure here the dean of the college, Dan Leidig, assigned me to chair the Reynolds Lecture Committee, and so I had the good fortune of helping bring to campus such eminent humanists as Helen Vendler, James Redfield, John Simon, Wayne Booth, and Northrop Frye, among others.\u00a0 I never dreamed, of course, that I would be joining their ranks as a Reynolds Lecturer, and I naturally feel that this is an instance of the ridiculous linking up with the sublime.\u00a0 At the same time, we all stand on the shoulders of giants, which is both humbling and elevating. \u00a0\u00a0The first Reynolds lecturer at Emory & Henry\u2013\u2013in 1963\u2013\u2013was Norman Cousins, peace activist and long\u2011time editor of the Saturday Review<\/em>.\u00a0 Two years later the president of the college, William Finch, whose son Tyree has joined us tonight, introduced the second Reynolds lecturers (there were two that year, on successive nights), both distinguished poets and critics, John Crowe Ransom and Reed Whittemore.\u00a0 The shoulders of giants, indeed.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve called my lecture tonight \u201cWhat\u2019s a Meta For?\u201d\u2013\u2013a title stolen from a quip by Marshall McLuhan: \u201cAh, but a man\u2019s reach should exceed his grasp, or what\u2019s a metaphor?\u201d\u00a0 McLuhan, too, was a thief: he was twisting the end of a line from Browning, \u201cAh, but a man\u2019s reach should exceed his grasp, or what\u2019s a heaven for?\u201d\u00a0 That is, the notion of an ideal world, which we may never attain, nevertheless motivates us to seek something better than what we\u2019ve now got: it may elude our grasp but in our Utopianism we still reach for it.\u00a0 I think metaphor in its most radical forms may have something to do with our linguistic reach exceeding our grasp, which is a notion I\u2019ll come back to.\u00a0 Rather than trying to define tonight what metaphor is, I\u2019ll be reflecting on some of the contexts in which we encounter metaphor.<\/p>\n

Metaphor is, of course, along with myth, one of the basic building blocks of literature.\u00a0 John Keats\u2019s masterful Ode on a Grecian Urn <\/em>begins with three metaphors.\u00a0 Keats is speaking to the urn: he addresses it by saying, \u201cThou still unravish\u2019d bride of quietness, \/ Thou foster-child of silence and slow time, \/ Sylvan historian.\u201d\u00a0 In these nouns of direct address Keats, who was in his early twenties when he wrote the poem, is identifying the urn with a bride, a child, and a historian.\u00a0 The suggestions that issue from the three metaphors are fairly complex.\u00a0 Of course everyone knows that an urn is not a bride, and yet Keats is saying that it is a bride and not just that: she\u2019s a bride who\u2019s still chaste.\u00a0 Furthermore, she\u2019s married to quietness.\u00a0 And she is also a child, or rather a foster\u2011child, who has been nourished by her adoptive parents, silence and slow time. \u00a0We could spend the rest of the evening investigating the magical language of Keats\u2019s poem\u2013\u2013its metaphors, paradoxes, and puns.\u00a0 The point I want to make is that the extraordinary uses to which Keats puts figurative language is commonplace among poets.\u00a0 Here\u2019s another, the opening lines of one of Jeff Daniel Marion\u2019s old Chinese poet poems: \u201cOver the river this quarter moon \/ tilts in its dark well, \/ a gleaming dipper \/ spilling October.\u201d\u00a0 Here the moon is a gleaming dipper, and the heavens are a dark well.\u00a0 This is the way poets talk.<\/p>\n

Metaphor, however, is an aspect of language that belongs not just to poets and novelists and playwrights.\u00a0 In a story in a recent issue of a college student newspaper I read about the soccer team\u2019s \u201cdream season, the \u201cnoise\u201d that it took to wake the team up from its dream, about a \u201csudden death\u201d period, about the opposing team\u2019s drawing \u201cfirst blood.\u201d\u00a0 And I read in a college catalogue, a most unpoetic document, about \u201ccultivating students\u2019 sensitivity,\u201d students being, in this metaphor, something you run a plow through, like dirt.\u00a0 In one of her \u201cMessages from the President\u201d in the alumni journal Emory & Henry\u2019s Rosalind Reichard quotes George Peery, class of 1894, who forty years later became the governor of Virginia, as saying that the ideals \u201ccultivated\u201d at Emory & Henry deeply influenced his life.\u00a0 That\u2019s the plowing metaphor again.\u00a0 The Indo\u2011European root for \u201ccultivate\u201d means to revolve or move around, which is what the plow does to the field.\u00a0 In the most recent alumni journal President Reichard moves from the garden to the sea, speaking about the \u201ctides of influence\u201d that have rippled forth from Emory & Henry.\u00a0 Perhaps this metaphor comes from her inaugural address, where she quoted an alumnus as saying that Emory & Henry continues to send \u201cout tides of influence that touch the whole hungry soul of man.\u201d\u00a0 Because the alumnus begins with a watery metaphor, he would doubtless have been better served, at least to those not given to mixed metaphors, to have said \u201cthe whole thirsty soul of man.\u201d\u00a0 A final example from President Reichard comes in her message in the recent annual report.\u00a0 \u201cEmory & Henry,\u201d she says, \u201cis a beacon of hope envisioned by her founders.\u201d\u00a0 And then she extends the metaphor saying that the college is a glowing light in the heart of many of us that will shine brightly for many decades.\u00a0 So here we have an administrator and a mathematician, Rosalind Reichard, using one of the key elements of the language of poetry.<\/p>\n

But back to more mundane texts, like college catalogues.\u00a0 I pick one up and read about the holder of a degree, about the fortifying of students\u2019 minds, about launching on a voyage of discovery, about the important voice the students have in shaping programs (two metaphors there), about higher education being a marketplace of ideas, about instructional tools, about a semester spanning the summer months, about the library as an electronic gateway, about instructional software and flexible seating, about developing a strategy for accomplishing goals, and so on.\u00a0 So even in the most unpoetic and leaden prose, we find metaphor.\u00a0 (\u201cLeaden\u201d in that sentence is of course also a metaphor, one that derives from metallurgy.)<\/p>\n

Or one can turn to the daily press, which wouldn\u2019t on the face of it seem to be a particularly fertile field for metaphor.\u00a0 (Note \u201cfertile field.\u201d) \u00a0In the headlines of the Roanoke Times<\/em> I read that the GOP leader will step down, that a mountain is hiding a quiet threat, that the media are too soft on the president, that three-year college degrees are a fast track, that a basketball player has come to the end of the road, that loyalists slam Cuban defectors.\u00a0 Here are two from a David Brooks editorial:\u00a0 (1) Mitt Romney is a corporate vulture and (2) when people read Ron Paul the scales fall from their eyes.\u00a0 This last one comes from the account of the conversion of Ron Paul\u2019s namesake, St. Paul, a.k.a Saul, on the road to Damascus.\u00a0 In Acts we\u2019re told that \u201csomething like scales fell from his eyes\u201d and he could see again.\u00a0 That\u2019s simile, not metaphor.\u00a0 But the simile has become a metaphor in common parlance, referring to a person who has come to a sudden realization.\u00a0 \u201cRoad to Damascus experience\u201d is a metaphor growing out of the same story.\u00a0 Here are a few more from the headlines in the New York Times<\/em> of 17 January 2012: \u201cRomney Opponents\u2019 Main Target in G.O.P. Debate,\u201d \u201cFor Romney\u2019s Rivals Time Is Running Out,\u201d \u201cRomney Keeps Eye on Obama,\u201d \u201cThe Invisible Hand behind Wall Street Bonuses,\u201d \u201cIran Face\u2011Off\u201d (that one\u2019s from hockey), \u201cWikipedia To Go Dark,\u201d \u201cIsraelis Facing a Seismic Rift Over Role of Women,\u201d and \u201cBang for the Buck.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The point is all too obvious: metaphors are in fact with us all the time, and we can\u2019t seem to use language at any level or for any purpose without calling on metaphor (notice the verb \u201ccalling on\u201d).\u00a0 Metaphor, then, is not simply a figure of speech that poets use because they think we need to get a little ornamental bulk into our reading diets.<\/p>\n

Metaphor, in the Greek, means carrying from one place to another.\u00a0 And a great deal of this carrying goes on, not only in the extraordinary language of a Wallace Stevens or an Elizabeth Bishop or a Charles Wright, but in ordinary speech.\u00a0 The best treatment of this is in a little book by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson called Metaphors We Live By<\/em>.\u00a0 They argue that \u201cmost of our ordinary conceptual system is metaphorical in nature.\u201d\u00a0 To give a few of their examples.\u00a0 First, the metaphor that argument is war is reflected in our ordinary speech in a number of expressions. \u00a0\u201cYour claims are indefensible<\/strong>.\u201d\u00a0 \u201cHe attacked<\/strong> every weak point in my argument.\u201d \u00a0\u201cHis criticisms were right on target<\/strong>.\u201d\u00a0 \u201cI demolished<\/strong> his argument.\u201d\u00a0 \u201cI\u2019ve never won<\/strong> an argument with her.\u201d\u00a0 \u201cIf you use that strategy<\/strong>, he\u2019ll wipe you out.\u201d \u00a0\u201cShe shot down<\/strong> all my arguments.\u201d \u00a0Here we understand and experience one thing in terms of another. \u00a0The concept of argument is metaphorically structured and so the language we often use to talk about it is metaphorically structured as well.\u00a0 Arguments are also containers: they have holes in them, they\u2019re empty, they don\u2019t hold water, etc.<\/p>\n

Or take the concept that time is money.\u00a0 We speak about wasting and spending and saving time.\u00a0 And we say such things as, \u201cI don\u2019t have time to give<\/strong> you.\u201d\u00a0 \u201cMy time is valuable<\/strong>.\u201d\u00a0 \u201cI\u2019ve invested<\/strong> a lot of time in writing that paper.\u201d\u00a0 \u201cYou need to budget<\/strong> your time.\u201d\u00a0 \u201cShe\u2019s living on borrowed<\/strong> time.\u201d\u00a0 \u201cLearn to use your time profitably<\/strong>.\u201d\u00a0 \u201cIs that worth<\/strong> your while?\u201d\u00a0 In other words, we conceive of time as a valuable commodity: it has worth; and so we understand it as something that can be spent, wasted, budgeted, invested, saved, squandered, and so on.<\/p>\n

Love is a third example of how metaphors structure our ordinary ideas and how this structure is reflected in our language. \u00a0I\u2019m still drawing on Lakoff and Johnson.\u00a0 Here we have several metaphors at work.\u00a0 Love is a physical force (\u201cthey lost their momentum<\/strong>,\u201d \u201cthey gravitated<\/strong> toward each other, \u201cthey could feel the electricity<\/strong> between them\u201d).\u00a0 Or, love is a patient (\u201ctheir marriage is on the mend<\/strong>,\u201d \u201ctheir marriage is dead<\/strong>\u2013\u2013it can\u2019t be revived<\/strong>,\u201d \u201ctheirs is a sick<\/strong> relationship\u201d).\u00a0 Or, love is war (\u201che fought<\/strong> for her,\u201d \u201cshe retreated <\/strong>from his advances,\u201d \u201cshe was besieged<\/strong> by suitors,\u201d \u201che overpowered<\/strong> her and won her hand.\u00a0 Or\u2013\u2013one final example, love is a journey (\u201cwe\u2019ll have to go our separate ways<\/strong>,\u201d \u201cthis relationship is a dead\u2011end street<\/strong>,\u201d \u201cthey took the high road\u201d<\/strong>).\u00a0 The point is that metaphor is pervasive in everyday language and it reflects the underlying ideas we share.\u00a0 A cognitive or conceptual metaphor is a figurative or non\u2011literal statement that describes some basic abstract concept, such as love, using the language of physiology or psychology, such as madness or insanity. \u00a0We\u2019ll come back to the love is insanity metaphor.\u00a0 Lakoff and Johnson\u2019s book was published more than thirty years ago.\u00a0 Since that time, scores of books have been written to confirm and expand their theory.\u00a0 The cognitive linguists\u2019 study of metaphor is a fairly large academic industry.<\/p>\n

That metaphor is not just the province of poets could be illustrated by the scientists too.\u00a0 If John Keats is highly dependent on metaphor, so are scientists. \u00a0The chief metaphor in physics from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries was the machine.\u00a0 Galileo, Descartes, Boyle, and Newton all imagined the universe as a vast machine.\u00a0 The Cartesian philosophy implied that the hand of God had set the machine in motion at the creation.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re beyond the Industrial Revolution, and machine metaphors have been replaced by those of the computer.\u00a0 The physicist Edward Fredkin describes the universe as a cosmological computer.\u00a0 Or the universe is said to be a network of interrelated parts. \u00a0The atom is no longer considered to be the basic building block (notice that metaphor).\u00a0 The universe is rather a web of relations.\u00a0 Some scientists speak of the universe as being the surface of a balloon.\u00a0 For Newton, rays of light were bodies\u2013\u2013the so-called corpuscular theory of light.\u00a0 We\u2019re all familiar with the Enlightenment metaphor of God as the clockmaker.\u00a0 For Maxwell, magnetic fields were little whirlpools, which he called vortices.\u00a0 For Lemaitre, the father of the Big Bang theory, in the beginning a giant atom exploded and the evolution of the world is a display of fireworks that has just ended.\u00a0 In quantum mechanics we have wave theory.\u00a0 And I understand that in the forefront of theoretical physics today there\u2019s something called string theory\u2013\u2013the notion that matter is not a point-like object but a one-dimensional, vibrating structure called a \u201cstring.\u201d\u00a0 Brian Greene, a kind of rock star among physicists, says these strings are \u201cakin to a string symphony vibrating matter into existence.\u201d\u00a0 That phrase is from his book entitled Fabric of the Cosmos<\/em>, the metaphor here coming from the domain of knitting or weaving with its warp and woof. <\/em>\u00a0Scientists, apparently, need something more than their equations, and they rely on metaphor to supply this something more.\u00a0 In his book on \u201cdeep time\u201d Stephen Jay Gould says that \u201cthe interplay of internal and external sources\u2013\u2013of theory informed by metaphor and observation constrained by theory\u2013\u2013marks any major movement in science.\u201d\u00a0 That\u2019s from a book called Time\u2019s Arrow, Time\u2019s Cycle<\/em>, arrow and cycle being metaphors we use to try to grasp the idea of time.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re all familiar with the metaphorical vocabulary that computers have spawned: world\u2011wide web and associated terms like weblog or just blog, menu, files and folders (and various subcategories of these, such as corrupt file), cut and paste, drag and drop, wrap the text, clipboard, software and hardware, open a new window, desktop, search engine, tools, libraries, download and upload, clip art, mail merge, virus, mailbox, mouse\u2013\u2013terms so familiar that they\u2019re practically dead metaphors, like \u201cunder the weather\u201d or \u201cspill the beans.\u201d\u00a0 Note that the phrase \u201cdead metaphor\u201d is itself a metaphor: metaphors don\u2019t literally live and die.<\/p>\n

And in other fields: for Hobbes, the state was a leviathan; for Plato, perception itself is seeing shadows on the wall; for theologians\u2013\u2013at least some of them\u2013\u2013God is a father; for Hume, the mind is a theater; for Descartes, the mind in its body is a pilot in a ship.<\/p>\n

Sports is a fertile field for metaphor (note fertile field).\u00a0 I played basketball for a good portion of my life, and even in my dotage have not been able to wean myself from the sport, though now that means watching it on TV or on Bob Johnson court.\u00a0 I\u2019m always struck by how the announcers cannot open their mouths without metaphors spilling out.\u00a0 Watching the NCAA tournament this month, I collected more than fifty with very little effort: charity stripe, down town, kiss it off the glass, string music, in the paint, on the boards, called for steps, set a screen, run and gun, free throw, hit the deck, slam dunk, kick it out, garbage time, pick and roll, hand check, jump hook, jump ball, circus shot, coast to coast, sky hook, forced up a prayer (which is another version of the \u201cHail Mary\u201d in football), take a charge, March madness (and related to that, going to the dance), airmailed the pass, called for walking (and called for traveling), in a zone, he\u2019s been unconscious, hanging around the hoop, yo\u2011yoing the two bigs, took it to the cup, air ball, knock it down, post player, dish it off, telegraph the pass, back\u2011door cut, point guard, skywalker, threw up a brick, smooth stroke, pump fake, wrap around pass, pull that pumpkin out of traffic, he hot potatoed it, a nickel and dime call, a runner, a floater, and a tear drop (those are particular kinds of shots), shoot the rock, squeeze the orange, drop step, turn up another notch, spin\u2011cycle move\u2013\u2013the list could go on and on.\u00a0 We should not forget \u201ctrifecta,\u201d a metaphor that Dick Vitale, a most irritating announcer, has imported from horse\u2011racing to refer to a three\u2011point shot.\u00a0 Dr. James Naismith invented basketball by suspending a peach basket in a YMCA gym.\u00a0 The basket was literally a basket.\u00a0 Now the metal rim with a suspended, cylindrical nylon net is only metaphorically so.<\/p>\n

A while back I gave a little talk in which I observed that our hymnals are rich metaphorical sourcebooks.\u00a0 If you ever get bored with the sermon, you can flip through your hymnal and get examples like these: God is a mighty fortress, Christ is a master workman, Christ is a star of the East, Christ is a dying lamb, the earth is a story teller, the Holy Spirit is a dove or a divine fire or a wind, Christ is a solid rock and similar figures from the mineral world (such as Rock of Ages), God\u2019s mercy is a bright beam, Christians are soldiers (and also from that famous hymn, we are the body of Christ), the hour of prayer is sweet, the heart is a dwelling place, Christ is the light of light, Jesus is a shepherd; and of course all the royal metaphors imported from the Old Testament of the \u201cChrist is king\u201d or \u201cChrist is ruler\u201d variety and the associated metaphors of crowns, diadems, and thrones.\u00a0 Some hymns give us rather difficult instructions, such as \u201cfold to thy heart thy brother\u201d or \u201clift up your hearts,\u201d the folding of a brother and the lifting of a heart seeming to be rather difficult things to do literally.\u00a0 Sometimes we get dual metaphors, as in the hymn \u201cO Holy City,\u201d where we\u2019re told that \u201cChrist the Lamb doth reign,\u201d a figure that combines a pastoral and sacrificial image with a royal or regal one: Christ is a lamb: the lamb is a king.\u00a0 In \u201cO Master of the Waking World,\u201d we\u2019re told that Christ has all the nations in his heart, an extraordinary metaphor that rather strains our powers of comprehension.\u00a0 In another hymn we\u2019re called on to deliver our land from \u201cerror\u2019s chain.\u201d\u00a0 Why \u201cchain\u201d?\u00a0 Well, the hymnist needs a word to rhyme with \u201cplain\u201d and \u201cslain,\u201d but we nevertheless sense the direction in which the figure takes us: the heathen nations (the hymnist mentions India and Africa, along with\u2013\u2013get this\u2013\u2013Greenland) are imprisoned (that is, chained) by error.\u00a0 Even in \u201cMy Country, \u2019tis of Thee\u201d freedom is said to be a holy light, and as one of the imperatives is for it to ring from the mountain side, freedom also seems to be a bell.\u00a0 In \u201cIt Singeth Low in Every Heart\u201d we\u2019re told that the dead \u201cthrong the silence of our breasts,\u201d which means metaphorically that in our breasts, where everything is silent, we have a host of dead souls or maybe just dead people hanging out, an image that is something of a problem for the literal minded.\u00a0 In \u201cPraise to the Lord, the Almighty,\u201d we were told in the first stanza that \u201cGod is health\u201d and in the second stanza that God is a bird.\u00a0 As we\u2019re sheltered under the wings of God, this appears to be a mother bird, a hen perhaps.\u00a0 The hymnist doesn\u2019t say that God is like a mother hen, but that he is one.\u00a0 One benediction couplet is this: \u201cGod be with you till we meet again; neath his wings securely hide you.\u201d\u00a0 Now there are lots of things that have wings, including pterodactyls, insects, bats, angels, buildings, and airplanes, but surely what we have here is another God\u2011is\u2011bird metaphor, or perhaps more accurately \u201cGod is a protective bird.\u201d<\/p>\n

The literature on metaphor is immense.\u00a0 In 1971 Warren Shibles published a book called Metaphor:\u00a0 An Annotated Bibliography and History<\/em>, a 414\u2011page compilation of sources on metaphor from different fields (philosophy, literary criticism, linguistics, psychology, etc.).\u00a0 This is a very useful source: its limitation is that it goes only through the late 1960s, which was just before the tremendous explosion of writing about metaphor in a wide range of fields.\u00a0 If you search for the word \u201cmetaphor\u201d at Amazon.com, you\u2019ll be directed to more than 5,600 books.\u00a0 \u201cMetaphor\u201d as a keyword in World Cat yields more than 55,000 hits.\u00a0 Emory & Henry psychology professor Paul Blaney sent me a New York Times <\/em>article this week that observed that even the neuroscientists are getting involved.\u00a0 \u201cLast month,\u201d the article says, \u201ca team of researchers from Emory University reported . . . that when subjects in their laboratory read a metaphor involving texture, the sensory cortex, responsible for perceiving texture through touch, became active.\u00a0 Metaphors like \u2018The singer had a velvet voice\u2019 and \u2018He had leathery hands\u2019 roused the sensory cortex, while phrases matched for meaning, like \u201cThe singer had a pleasing voice\u2019 and \u2018He had strong hands,\u2019 did not.\u201d \u00a0In short, metaphor is a hot topic:\u00a0 it would take several dozen lifetimes just to read through what\u2019s been written about it.\u00a0 But that does not keep us from raising the question, What then is metaphor?<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll begin with Aristotle since, as with most things, he has something important to say.\u00a0 In the Poetics<\/em> he remarks, \u201cMetaphor consists in giving the thing a name that belongs to something else; the transference being . . . on grounds of analogy.\u201d\u00a0 We might call this the transference theory of metaphor, a view that held sway for a long time\u2013\u2013all the way to the twentieth century.\u00a0 Aristotle understands metaphor as something that deviates from literal usage:\u00a0 it involves the transfer of a name to some thing to which that name doesn\u2019t properly belong.\u00a0 If Keats calls his Grecian urn a \u201cstill unravished bride of quietness,\u201d we have, in Aristotle\u2019s view, the transfer of a name, bride, to an object, the urn, to which the name doesn\u2019t belong (urns are not brides).\u00a0 Metaphor, Aristotle says in the Poetics<\/em>, is one of those modes of speech that \u201cdeviates from ordinary modes of speech.\u201d\u00a0 Here, then, we have the separation between the literal or ordinary modes of language and the figurative, which is a deviation from the ordinary.\u00a0 Aristotle says that metaphor is based on similarities<\/em> between two things: a metaphor involves comparisons.\u00a0 In a famous passage in the Poetics<\/em>, he remarks that being a master of metaphor is something that can\u2019t be learned; it\u2019s \u201ca sign of genius, since a good metaphor implies an intuitive perception of the similarity in dissimilars.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 Since we can\u2019t avoid metaphor, it\u2019s good to learn that we\u2019re all geniuses.\u00a0 But the thing to be noticed in Aristotle\u2019s remark is its emphasis on similarity or analogy (X is like Y) rather than identity (X is Y).<\/p>\n

In a recent book called Linguistics for Everyone<\/em> we\u2019re told that \u201cA metaphor, as Aristotle conceived it and as we still understand it, is a figure of speech that sets up an analogy between two words or phrases: something is something else<\/em>.\u201d \u00a0In this book, which was written by my daughter Kristin, we have a conflation of the view that metaphor involves likeness or similarity or analogy with the view that it involves identity: something is<\/em> something else, as well as something is like<\/em> something else.\u00a0 We\u2019ll come back to this distinction between analogy and identity.<\/p>\n

It says something about Aristotle\u2019s genius that almost every major treatment of metaphor up to the twentieth century is anticipated in his account.\u00a0 No radically new view of metaphor emerged until the mid-twentieth century.\u00a0 Consider two important figures from the last century, I.A. Richards and Max Black, one a literary critic and one a philosopher.\u00a0 A great deal of the discussion of metaphor in recent years takes off from Richards and Black.\u00a0 Their ideas are similar.\u00a0 Their view of metaphor has been called the interaction theory.\u00a0 One of the things they\u2019re both interested in is how metaphors work.\u00a0 What is the interaction view?<\/p>\n

Metaphor, says Black, is not a matter of indirectly substituting some intended literal meaning.\u00a0 This would be the substitution theory of metaphor.\u00a0 If we were to say \u201cJohn Doe is an ogre,\u201d we would be saying, according to the substitution view, that \u201cJohn Doe is cruel or brutish or maybe even hideous.\u201d\u00a0 Secondly, Black says that metaphor is not a matter of picking out a relevant set of similarities in the two terms of the utterance.\u00a0 This would be the comparison view, which says in effect, that metaphor is really simile: \u201cJohn Doe is like an ogre\u201d or \u201cMy love is like a red, red rose.\u201d\u00a0 What Black proposes instead is the interaction view.\u00a0 His idea is that metaphor is composed of two subjects, a principal one and a subsidiary one, and that the principal subject acquires new meaning through its involvement or interaction with the subsidiary one.\u00a0 The subsidiary subject organizes our thought about the principal subject in a new way, and we can\u2019t reduce metaphor to any kind of literal formulation.\u00a0 What happens, Black says, is that in a metaphor like \u201cJohn Doe is an angel\u201d we have a system of associated commonplaces or properties for both \u201cJohn Doe\u201d and \u201cangel\u201d and that they interact with each other in a way that produces an emergent meaning that can\u2019t be reduced to any kind of literal statement of pre-existing similarities.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll skip over Richards\u2019 view, which also challenged the dominant Aristotelian paradigm, because it\u2019s quite similar to Black\u2019s.\u00a0 In fact, Black\u2019s position was really developed from Richards\u2019.\u00a0 But I do want to glance at Northrop Frye, who has influenced some of my own thinking about metaphor, as indeed he has influenced my thinking about a number things.\u00a0 Frye notes that the principle involved in metaphor is not one of similarity or analogy (that\u2019s the simile) but one of identity.\u00a0 When we say \u201cX is Y,\u201d we\u2019re identifying two things.\u00a0 Such a statement takes us out of the realm of ordinary relations.\u00a0 If we say \u201cstudents are angels\u201d or \u201cstudents are ogres,\u201d everybody with any sense knows that they are obviously neither.\u00a0 Metaphor, therefore, involves paradox and so upsets our conventional way of thinking about things.\u00a0 It\u2019s certainly not reasonable.\u00a0 In fact, metaphor paralyzes the reason.\u00a0 Nor is it logical.\u00a0 It\u2019s not so much illogical as it is counterlogical.\u00a0 Frye sees metaphor as the most primary and primitive mode of expression, one that arises in human history before the separation of subjects and objects intrudes onto our consciousness.\u00a0 If instead of using hyphenated expression like \u201csun-god\u201d or \u201criver-god\u201d we substitute an equal mark for the hyphen, we can perhaps understand what our earliest forebears were getting at. \u00a0That is, in an expression like \u201csun-god\u201d early humanity was saying, not that the god is like the sun but that the god was the sun\u2013\u2013literally.\u00a0 That is, there\u2019s a direct equation between \u201csun\u201d and \u201cgod\u201d:\u00a0 they\u2019re the same thing.\u00a0 And in this situation, subject and object distinctions, which separate the two terms, don\u2019t apply.\u00a0 Heidegger called this \u201cecstatic metaphor;\u201d Frye calls it \u201cexistential metaphor\u201d\u2013\u2013the idea of an identity between individual consciousness and something in the natural world.\u00a0 Very mysterious, this idea of identity.\u00a0 But isn\u2019t that the way we\u2019re forced to talk when we want to squeeze from language the sense of the mystery and power and ineffability that language seems otherwise incapable of expressing.\u00a0 In Ode on a Grecian Urn<\/em> Keats, who would be dead at age twenty\u2011five, two years after he wrote his great odes, goes on to say that the urn \u201cdost tease us out of thought \/ As doth eternity.\u201d\u00a0 Eternity is one of those concepts, like infinity, that sometimes teases us into thinking that we can get our minds around it, but we\u2019re not capable of thinking in dimensions beyond ordinary, measurable space and time.\u00a0 Eternity really does \u201ctease us out of thought.\u201d\u00a0 So does metaphor in its effort to get beyond ordinary perception.<\/p>\n

Two examples: the language of love and the language of religion.\u00a0 How does one express the experience of love?\u00a0 Well, there are many answers to the question, but one of the ways is surely to call on metaphor when all else fails.\u00a0 We have very abstract metaphors for the experience, as when we say that two become one.\u00a0 Two become one?\u00a0 How silly, when we all know that two can\u2019t become one.\u00a0 But we say it anyway, in the marriage ceremony and in other ways.\u00a0 In Religio Medici <\/em>Sir Thomas Browne remarks that \u201cUnited souls are not satisfied with embraces, but desire to be truly each other.\u201d \u00a0\u00a0<\/em>Sometimes the two\u2011are\u2011one equation is downright carnal, as in Iago\u2019s \u201cthe beast with two backs.\u201d\u00a0 The same idea is expressed a bit more decorously in Genesis 2:24, where we\u2019re told that a man cleaves to his wife and that they become one flesh.\u00a0 Two fleshes become one flesh\u2013\u2013they\u2019re identified, they\u2019re the same thing.\u00a0 Any fool knows they\u2019re not the same thing, even when they\u2019re tightly intertwined.\u00a0 Yet the Yahwist writer says they\u2019re identical.\u00a0 He also says it by using the word \u201ccleave,\u201d which is a kind of dead metaphor, meaning to stick to or adhere.\u00a0 The<\/em> Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament <\/em>says that <\/em>the Hebrew for \u201ccleave\u201d (dabaq<\/em>) is used quite often in the Old Testament to refer to physical things sticking to each other, especially parts of the body.\u00a0 In 1 Kings, Solomon is said to cleave to many of the strange women he loved (11:2).\u00a0 In English \u201ccleave\u201d derives from an Indo-European root meaning to form into a ball, another archetypal metaphor for unity or oneness, or the equation between two and one.<\/p>\n

For the Yahwist writer the metaphorical is the literal, as it is in almost every other Biblical writer and as it is in the New Yorker <\/em>cartoon which shows a man in his doctor\u2019s office with what looks like a hunting knife sticking out of his back.\u00a0 He\u2019s sitting in front of and facing the doctor.\u00a0 The doctor says, \u201cGood news.\u00a0 Test results show it\u2019s a metaphor.\u201d\u00a0 We all know that metaphorically to stab someone in the back is to betray him or her.\u00a0 This poor bloke has been literally stabbed in the back and has apparently relayed this information to the doctor and is now waiting for a diagnosis or a cure.\u00a0 For the patient the metaphorical has become the literal.\u00a0 For the doctor the literal is the metaphorical.\u00a0 A classic case of the literal\u2013metaphorical dialectic is in Sophocles\u2019 Oedipus the King<\/em>.\u00a0 In this play we have a prophet, Tiresias, who is literally blind but who can metaphorically see, and a king, Oedipus, who can literally see but who is metaphorically blind.\u00a0 Then, in the great recognition scene at the end, when Oedipus discovers the truth about his having committed parricide and incest, he can metaphorically see at the moment he literally blinds himself with his dead wife\u2019s brooches.\u00a0 Physical blindness and metaphorical seeing or understanding are coincident.\u00a0 The conceptual metaphor underlying this is a familiar one: understanding is light or sight: \u201cOh I see<\/strong> what you\u2019re saying,\u201d \u201cDid she throw any light<\/strong> on the subject,\u201d \u201cHe was a real visionary<\/strong>,\u201d \u201cDid he provide any insight<\/strong>?\u201d and even the light bulb that flashes above someone\u2019s head in the comics, signaling a eureka moment.<\/p>\n

In A Midsummer Night\u2019s Dream<\/em> Theseus is somewhat mystified about what\u2019s been played out before him, and he says that the \u201cThe lunatic, the lover, and the poet \/ Are of imagination all compact,\u201d by which he means, essentially, that these three groups of people are really crazies because they talk about things that don\u2019t really happen.\u00a0 He goes on to say that lunatics can see more devils than hell can hold and that poets move their eyes from heaven to earth and earth to heaven, like an insane person who\u2019s tripping out.\u00a0 And of course lovers are crazy, as all of us know, and in fact as we frequently say. \u00a0\u201cLove is madness\u201d is another one of those conceptual or cognitive metaphors that is reflected in our ordinary talk about love: \u201cI\u2019m crazy <\/strong>about her,\u201d \u201cShe drives me out of my mind<\/strong>,\u201d \u201cHe constantly raves<\/strong> about her,\u201d \u201cThey were madly<\/strong> in love,\u201d \u201cI\u2019m just wild<\/strong> about Harry, \u201cHe went nuts<\/strong> over her,\u201d \u201cThey were both moonstruck<\/strong>\u201d (\u201clunatic\u201d comes from the Latin for moon),\u201d \u201cHe drove her cuckoo<\/strong>,\u201d \u201cShe went berserk<\/strong> over him,\u201d and so on). \u00a0Theseus doesn\u2019t put much stock in all this lunacy, because he really doesn\u2019t believe in metaphor.<\/p>\n

Theseus might have included the prophet or other religious writers among his group of crazies, because they too can\u2019t seem to open their mouths without using metaphors.\u00a0 How to express the ineffable?\u00a0 The central metaphor in the Christian tradition is the Incarnation, the most counterlogical of all concepts.\u00a0 What the Incarnation says, in an abstract way, is that God is a human being.\u00a0 Well, we all know that God isn\u2019t a human being, and yet the gospel accounts keep saying that this particular human being, Jesus, is divine.\u00a0 It\u2019s the principle of identity that\u2019s at work.\u00a0 X = Y.\u00a0 In William Blake\u2019s formulation it\u2019s \u201cthe human form divine.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Bible is one massive tissue of interconnected metaphors.\u00a0 We\u2019re told, for example, that Christ is not simply God (that\u2019s the abstract identity) but that he\u2019s a lamb and a tree of life and a vine and a way and a light and a living stone and a bridegroom and all kinds of other things.\u00a0 Not that he\u2019s like<\/em> these things but that he is<\/em> these things.\u00a0 And we even have Christ himself as the ultimate metaphor-maker: he tells his disciples that the bread and wine are his body and blood.\u00a0 The doctrine of transubstantiation is really an argument for metaphor, because it insists on the radical identity of X and Y.\u00a0 At least that\u2019s the case in the Catholic tradition.\u00a0 Protestants tend to say that the bread and wine are not really the body and blood but are symbolic of those things.\u00a0 That\u2019s pretty close to saying they are like those things.\u00a0 In other words, the Protestant view is closer to simile than metaphor, based as it is on likeness rather than identity.\u00a0 Actually, Luther\u2019s view of the Eucharist is called \u201cconsubstantiation,\u201d which means that Christ is present along with the unchanged reality of the bread and wine.<\/p>\n

A theological variation of the analogy versus identity opposition was played out in the Arian controversy of the fourth century.\u00a0 The issue debated by the theologians was whether Christ was of the same essence or substance (homoousios<\/em>) as the Father\u2013\u2013that is, the principle of identity\u2013\u2013or of similar essence (homoiousios<\/em>)\u2013\u2013the principle of analogy.\u00a0 Athanasius took the former position and Arius the latter.\u00a0 Some wag, referring to the extra vowel in homoiousios<\/em>, said there\u2019s not an iota<\/em> of difference between them.\u00a0 Anyway, the Church eventually decided in favor of Athanasius, which we might say was a victory for the metaphoric principle of identity.<\/p>\n

As you can see, this discussion of metaphor is leading into things that are becoming more and more mysterious, but I think that\u2019s where radical metaphor, in Frye\u2019s sense, ultimately leads us.\u00a0 As I say, it\u2019s counterlogical and thus paradoxical.\u00a0 Those who have difficulty with paradox will make little headway with metaphor, which is a linguistic function that stretches the mind and resists our habitual ways of thinking.\u00a0 But then there\u2019s a great deal in life that\u2019s counterlogical or paradoxical, and I\u2019ve often thought about, or tried to think about, the relation between identity as a principle of metaphoric structure and identity as a principle of self-definition.\u00a0 After all, it\u2019s a commonplace to talk about personal identity.\u00a0 It\u2019s a term we associate with the realization of character in literature, as when we ask, well, what\u2019s the real identity of Achilles or Hamlet or Stephen Dedalus?\u00a0 In his recent study of the Gospel of Mark, Peter\u2019s Last Sermon<\/em>, Emory & Henry professor James Dawsey devotes part of his book to the question of Jesus\u2019 identity: who was he to the people of Judea and Galilee, and who was he to the Christians of Mark\u2019s day?\u00a0 Dawsey, incidentally, seems to take special pleasure in metaphor\u2011making.\u00a0 In the first several pages of his book we get such figures as \u201chermeneutical tsunami,\u201d \u201cconceptual Grand Canyon,\u201d and Bultmann\u2019s \u201crickety bridge.\u201d<\/p>\n

But if we turn from characters in stories, like those in Mark\u2019s Gospel, to characters in life, we often ask, well, Who is she, really?\u2013\u2013meaning what\u2019s her identity\u2013\u2013or, if we\u2019re brave enough, Who am I?\u00a0 And perhaps the answer is that we are, in large part, what we identify with.\u00a0 When we possess this or that book, it becomes a part of our identity.\u00a0 \u201cIdentity\u201d and \u201cidentify\u201d both come from the Latin root \u201cidem,\u201d which means \u201cthe same.\u201d\u00a0 When we connect with this or that person, he or she becomes part of our identity.\u00a0 When we attach ourselves to this or that group\u2013\u2013a sorority, a religious body, a political affiliation, a family unit, yes, even a college\u2013\u2013then isn\u2019t it possible to say that our identity is what we identify with?\u00a0 You can see that I\u2019m using metaphors to ask these questions: possess, connect, attach.\u00a0 Or are we not also identified with what we create?\u00a0 In his Essays<\/em> Montaigne says, \u201cI have no more made my book than my book has made me,\u201d and not being quite satisfied with this he adds, \u201ca book consubstantial with its author.\u201d\u00a0 In other words, he is<\/em> <\/strong>his book, \u201cconsubstantial\u201d being the same word Luther uses for the relation between the body of Christ and the bread and the wine.<\/p>\n

Well, I\u2019ve moved from the language of newspapers and college catalogues to Christian doctrine, which is a mystery if anything is.\u00a0 That\u2019s why I think Browning and McLuhan were right in suggesting that we are forever reaching for things that are beyond our grasp. \u00a0\u00a0A moment ago I mentioned the metaphor of possession.\u00a0 We engage with the creative use of language in order to possess its powers, in order to internalize it and make it our own.\u00a0 I\u2019ve been suggesting that we are defined by what we possess.\u00a0 What we identify with possesses us and operates as an informing principle in our minds and our imaginations.\u00a0 In his little book The Educated Imagination<\/em> Frye says that our identity is defined by what the imagination \u201cswallows\u201d and takes into itself.\u00a0\u00a0 This is an ingestion metaphor.\u00a0 It is combined with the possession metaphor in the remarkable example of Ezekiel\u2019s eating the scroll:<\/p>\n

\u00a0I looked, and a hand was stretched out to me, and a written scroll was in it.\u00a0 He spread it before me; it had writing on the front and on the back, and written on it were words of lamentation and mourning and woe.\u00a0 He said to me, O mortal, eat what is offered to you; eat this scroll, and go, speak to the house of Israel.\u00a0 So I opened my mouth, and he gave me the scroll to eat.\u00a0 He said to me, Mortal, eat this scroll that I give you and fill your stomach with it. Then I ate it; and in my mouth it was as sweet as honey. (Ezekiel 2:9\u20133:3)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Ezekiel is possessed by the Word and so he takes it into himself, just as an angel advises the author of the Book of Revelation to do:<\/p>\n

\u00a0And I went unto the angel, and said unto him, Give me the little book. And he said unto me, Take it, and eat it up; and it shall make thy belly bitter, but it shall be in thy mouth sweet as honey. \u00a0(Revelation 10:9).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Milton speaks of the Word of God in the heart.\u00a0 Here we have the Word of God in the belly. \u00a0<\/span>The literal (actual ingestion of the Word) and the metaphorical (the possession of the Word) in these cases are the same thing.\u00a0 Digestion is a related metaphor: what we ingest must be digested.\u00a0 Here\u2019s an example from a book called Visions of War<\/em>:\u00a0 \u201cThe combatant author . . . often takes decades to digest the experiences\u201d\u2013\u2013that is, takes decades to assimilate the experiences into the body, here less into the belly, it seems, than into the head and heart.\u00a0 In the interest of equal time for my children, I should note that Visions of War<\/em> was written by my son Scott.<\/p>\n

A secular example of the ingestion of the word is a poem I first read 47 years ago\u2013\u2013when I was in the U.S. Army, stationed at Ft. Bliss, Texas.\u00a0 The poem is Eating Poetry<\/em> by Mark Strand.\u00a0 It begins like this:<\/p>\n

\u00a0Ink runs from the corners of my mouth.
\nThere is no happiness like mine.
\nI have been eating poetry.<\/p>\n

The librarian does not believe what she sees.
\nHer eyes are sad
\nand she walks with her hands in her dress.<\/p>\n

The poems are gone.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In the last stanza we learn that the poet is a \u201cnew man.\u201d\u00a0 \u201cI romp with joy,\u201d he says, \u201cin the bookish dark.\u201d\u00a0 The poet is transformed, and so his identity is defined, by taking into himself, by possessing the object of his affection. The word is no longer something out there.\u00a0 His identity is determined by what he has taken into himself, and so the distinction between the literal (swallowing the printed pages) and metaphorical (the possession of poetry which gives the poet an identity) tends to collapse.\u00a0 So where does this leave us?<\/p>\n

I began these reflections not with an attempt to answer the question, What is metaphor? but with some observations on how widespread metaphor is in the ordinary uses of language.\u00a0 I then glanced at several theories of metaphor, from Aristotle through Max Black to the conceptual metaphors of the cognitive linguists.\u00a0 Next I turned to Northrop Frye\u2019s more radical view of metaphor founded on the principle of identity, meaning that X and Y are not similar but the same. \u00a0I suggested that there may be a connection between identity as a form of metaphorical structure and identity as representing what one is as a person.<\/p>\n

It seems to me that metaphor in its most radical sense\u2013\u2013and radical doesn\u2019t mean the revolutionary avant-garde but rather going back to roots\u2013\u2013that metaphor in its most radical sense intensifies and expands our consciousness.\u00a0 It is, in short, mind\u2011blowing.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ll let William Blake have the final word.\u00a0 At the end of A Vision of the Last Judgment<\/em>, Blake writes: \u201cWhat it will be Questioned When the Sun rises do you not see a round Disk of fire somewhat like a Guinea.\u00a0 O no no I see an Innumerable company of the Heavenly host crying Holy Holy Holy is the Lord God Almighty.\u201d\u00a0 Blake is really talking about imaginative power here.\u00a0 He is calling attention to the difference between those who see the sun only in terms of the simile, likening its fiery disk to a guinea (a gold coin), and those who see it metaphorically as a hallelujah chorus of the heavenly host.\u00a0 Ah, but a man\u2019s reach should exceed his grasp, or what\u2019s a metaphor?\u00a0 Our grasp can certainly take in the simile: we recognize the similarity between the bright, shiny sun and the shiny gold coin: it takes very little imaginative effort to see the guinea\u2011sun.\u00a0 Seeing the hallelujah chorus, however, requires a greater imaginative reach, a reach beyond what we can grasp. \u00a0Would that we will continue to challenge those who might want to limit our imagination\u2019s stopping at what we can grasp.<\/p>\n

Thank you for your kind attention.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Reynolds Lecture for 2012, presented at Emory & Henry College, reflects on Frye’s view of metaphor only toward the end,\u00a0 I’ve often felt that theories of metaphor–at least those I’m familiar with–turn out to be founded on principles of similarity, comparison, analogy, or likeness.\u00a0 Frye’s theory is unique in that it’s founded on sameness […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29638","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nWhat\u2019s a Meta For? - The Educated Imagination<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/macblog.mcmaster.ca\/fryeblog\/2012\/06\/20\/whats-a-meta-for\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"What\u2019s a Meta For? 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