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Metaphor
1. What is metaphor?
A metaphor is an imaginative way of describing something by referring to
something else that has the qualities that you want to express. For example, if
you want to say that someone is very shy and timid, you might say that he/she is
a mouse.
Examples: pp. 90-93.
Metaphor: Oh, my love is a red, red rose.
Implied metaphor: Oh, my love has red petals and sharp thorns.
Analyze the following poems:
The Night Has a Thousand Eyes
Francis William Bourdillon (1852-1921)
The night has a thousand eyes,
And the day but one;
Yet the light of the bright world dies
With the dying sun.
The mind has a thousand eyes,
And the heart but one;
Yet the light of a whole life dies
When love is done.
The Eagle
Lord Tennyson Alfred (1809-1892)
He clasps the crag with crooked hands;
Close to the sun in lonely lands,
Ringed with the azure world, he stands.
The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;
He watches from his mountain walls,
And like a thunderbolt he falls.
2. What role does a metaphor play in our daily communication?
(1) It’s highly productive
One day I was driving down a freeway with my wife and two children
when one of my sones, age eight, remarked: “Hey, Mom, my sock has a
hangnail.” My wife, quietly, and without special note, responded: “Don’t
worry about it, I’ll fix it when we get home,” and the topic was dropped. I
was the only one of the four who even noticed anything unusual in this
interchange. Here, a new metaphor was created, produced, and
comprehended without the slightest awareness by either of the promary
participants. (David E. Rumelhart, 1979: p. 72)
Metaphors in daily life:
Water the spark of knowledge and it will bear fruit.
(2) The meaning legitimatize the usage of words (e.g., verbs, adjectives, etc.)