What is a Metaphor A Literary Guide for English Students and Teachers

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What is a Metaphor A Literary Guide for English Students and Teachers

OSU School of Writing, Literature and Film · ⏱ 2:19 · 207.6K مشاهدة · 7 years ago

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Metaphor: comparison between two things that are otherwise unrelated. With metaphor, the qualities of one thing are figuratively carried over to another. When say "Dude, I'm drowning at work," I'm using qualities associated with one thing (the urgency and helplessness of drowning) to convey meaning to another thing (all the work I've got to do). Metaphors are everywhere: He's the couch potato. She's got heart of gold. That party was the bomb. Money is the root of all evil. Swear words and slang are often metaphorical. Take bull for example. Can say bull Yeah, but it's perfect example of how the metaphors are everywhere... Yeah all right. That's bull By bringing two unrelated elements into comparison, metaphors add creativity and clarity to writing and everyday speech, allowing us to see things in different angles and in fresh light. Take the following sentence by HP Lovecraft, which uses vivid imagery to suggest the limits of our knowledge: "We live on placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity and it was not meant that we should voyage so far." In rhetorical and literary analysis, we often look at how authors use metaphors in ways that go beyond short phrases. An extended metaphor is one that goes on for several sentences. If metaphor is extended across an entire piece of writing, it's called controlling metaphor. In the novel Invisible Man, for example, Ralph Ellison extends the metaphor of invisibility to describe how black men and women are often overlooked in American society, pushed to the margins into the shadows. So metaphors aren't just some stylistic flourish that we use at the sentence level. In fact, according to George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, our very thought--the conceptual systems we use to think and act--are fundamentally metaphorical. They're intrinsic to thinking which is why it's wise to pay attention to how they're used. Metaphors: equipment for living... (which is also metaphor. OK, I'll stop.)