Extended metaphor
An extended metaphor, also known as a conceit or sustained metaphor, is the use of a single metaphor or analogy at length in a work of literature. It differs from a mere metaphor in its length, and in having more than one single point of contact between the object described (the so-called tenor) and the comparison used to describe it (the vehicle).[1][2] These implications are repeatedly emphasized, discovered, rediscovered, and progressed in new ways.[2]
History of meaning
In the Renaissance, the term (which is related to the word concept) indicated the idea that informed a literary work--its theme. Later, it came to stand for the extended and heightened metaphor common in Renaissance poetry, and later still it came to denote the even more elaborate metaphors of 17th century poetry.
The Renaissance conceit, given its importance in Petrarch's Il Canzoniere, is also referred to as Petrarchan conceit. It is a comparison in which human experiences are described in terms of an outsized metaphor (a kind of metaphorical hyperbole)--as in Petrarch's comparison between the effect of the gaze of the beloved and the sun melting snow. The history of poetry reveals shows poets often outdoing their predecessors, like Shakespeare building on Petrarchan imagery in his Sonnet 130: "My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun".[3]
The 17th-century and the sometimes so-called metaphysical poets extended the notion of the elaborate metaphor; their idea of conceit differs from an extended analogy in the sense that it does not have a clear-cut relationship between the things being compared.[3] Helen Gardner, in her study of the metaphysical poets, observed that "a conceit is a comparison whose ingenuity is more striking than its justness" and that "a comparison becomes a conceit when we are made to concede likeness while being strongly conscious of unlikeness." An example of the latter occurs in John Donne's "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning", in which a couple faced with absence from each other is likened to the legs of a compass.[4]
Petrarchan
The Petrarchan conceit is a form of love poetry wherein a man's love interest is referred to in hyperbole. For instance, the lover is a ship on a stormy sea, and his mistress is either "a cloud of dark disdain" or the sun.[5]
The paradoxical pain and pleasure of lovesickness is often described using oxymoron, for instance uniting peace and war, burning and freezing, and so forth. But images which were novel in the sonnets of Petrarch, in his innovative exploration of human feelings, became clichés in the poetry of later imitators. Romeo uses hackneyed Petrarchan conceits when describing his love for Rosaline as "bright smoke, cold fire, sick health".
William Shakespeare
In Sonnet 18 the speaker offers an extended metaphor which compares his love to Summer.[6] Shakespeare also makes use of extended metaphors in Romeo and Juliet, most notably in the balcony scene where Romeo offers an extended metaphor comparing Juliet to the sun.
- It is the east, and Juliet is the sun.
- Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon,
- Who is already sick and pale with grief,
- That thou her maid art far more fair than she:
- Be not her maid, since she is envious;
- Her vestal livery is but sick and green
- And none but fools do wear it; cast it off.[7]
Metaphysical conceit
The metaphysical conceit is often imaginative, exploring specific parts of an experience.[8] John Donne's "The Flea" is a poem seemingly about fleas in a bed. When Sir Philip Sidney begins a sonnet with the conventional idiomatic expression "My true-love hath my heart and I have his",[9] he takes the metaphor literally and teases out a number of literal possibilities in the exchange of hearts. The result is a fully formed conceit.
Contemporary examples
T. S. Eliot
In the following passage from "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock", T. S. Eliot provides another example of an extended metaphor:
- The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,
- The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes
- 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 that it was a soft October night,
- Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.[10]
Qualities (grounds) that we associate with cats (vehicle), color, rubbing, muzzling, licking, slipping, leaping, curling, sleeping, are used to describe the fog (tenor).[1]
Robert Frost
The commonly used "life-is-a-journey" metaphor conceptualized by Lakoff and Johnson (1980 and 1989)[11][12] is extended in Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken". An excerpt is provided below:
- I shall be telling this with a sigh
- Somewhere ages and ages hence:
- Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
- I took the one less traveled by,
- And that has made all the difference.[13]
This poem can be understood if the reader has knowledge of the "life-is-a-journey" metaphor. That knowledge includes understanding of other grounds between the tenor (life) and vehicle (journey) that are not as transparent in this poem. Holyoak (2005) gives examples of these grounds, "person is a traveler, purposes are destinations, actions are routes, difficulties in life are impediments to travel, counselors are guides, and progress is the distance traveled".[14]
See also
References
- ^ a b Thornborrow, Joanna; Wareing, Shân (1998). Patterns in Language: An Introduction to Language and Literary Style. Psychology Press. pp. 103–104. ISBN 0415140641.
- ^ a b Brummett, Barry (2009). Techniques of Close Reading. SAGE. pp. 81–82. ISBN 978-1412972659.
- ^ a b Johnson, C. (2012). "Conceit". In Cushman, Stephen; Cavanagh, Clare; Ramazani, Jahan; Rouzer, Paul (eds.). The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics: Fourth Edition. Princeton University Press. pp. 289–91. ISBN 978-1-4008-4142-4.
- ^ Gardner, Helen (1985) [1957]. "Introduction". The Metaphysical Poets. Penguin. pp. 19–22.
- ^ Najat Ismaeel Sayakhan (8 July 2014). THE TEACHING PROBLEMS OF ENGLISH POETRY IN THE ENGLISH DEPARTMENTS. Author House. p. 58. ISBN 978-1-4969-8399-2.
- ^ Aubusson, Peter J.; Harrison, Allan G.; Ritchie, Stephen M. (2005). Metaphor and Analogy in Science Education. Springer. pp. 3–4. ISBN 1402038291.
- ^ "Romeo and Juliet". The Complete Works of William Shakespeare. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Retrieved 4 November 2012.
- ^ Robert H. Ray (1998). An Andrew Marvell Companion. Taylor & Francis. p. 106. ISBN 978-0-8240-6248-4.
- ^ "Sir Philip Sidney. "My true love hath my heart, and I have his." Love sonnet from "Arcadia."". Luminarium.org. Retrieved 2013-07-05.
- ^ Eliot, T.S. "1. The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock". Prufrock and Other Observations. Bartleby.com. Retrieved 4 November 2012.
- ^ Lakoff, George; Johnson, Mark (1980). Metaphors We Live By. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0226468011.
- ^ Lakoff, George; Turner, Mark (1989). More than Cool Reason: A Field Guide to Poetic Metaphor. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0226468127.
- ^ Frost, Robert. "The Road Not Taken". Bartleby.com. Retrieved 4 November 2012.
- ^ Holyoak, Keith J.; Morrison, Robert G. (2005). The Cambridge Handbook of Thinking and Reasoning. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521824176.
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