![]() 5 My general account is influenced by views of language associated in particular with the work of Geo (.)Ĥ The bibliography on metaphor is vast, 3 yet the recursive aspect of the vocabulary – the fact that the word “metaphor” is itself a member of the set of words that it names – has only drawn sustained attention relatively recently.3 For a general history of metaphor, see the survey of Eggs in the HWRh s.v.I shall then (III) move on to pose the question as to whether certain ancient theorists (Aristotle, Cicero, and Horace) reveal a consciousness of the metaphorical nature of their descriptions of metaphor, before (IV) briefly considering some of the metaphors employed for metaphor in the twentieth (and twenty-first) century, when a growing mistrust of the old terminology prompted the creation of new terms and modes of presentation. One of my aims will be to demonstrate that the ancient metaphors for metaphor exemplified three functions of the trope mentioned by the ancient theorists: (a) its ability to provide a name for a hitherto unnamed thing, (b) the way in which it made vivid otherwise abstract concepts, and (c) its role in adorning prose and poetry. The nouns associated with this last group of metaphors – for example, the term “ proprietas ” (“proper meaning”) – contributed to the ancient vocabulary of meaning.ģ In what follows, I would like (I) to discuss the spatial metaphor implicit both in the term “metaphor” and in the ancient descriptions of the trope, before (II) considering the words used by the ancient philosophers and rhetoricians to describe metaphorical and non-metaphorical usages of language. A second group of metaphors for metaphor consisted of expressions such as “ὄνο µα οἰκεῖον ” (“proper term”) and “ὄνο µα ἀλλότριον ” (“borrowed/foreign term”) in Greek, “ uerbum proprium ” (“proper term”) and “ uerbum alienum ” (“borrowed/foreign term”) in Latin. Both Aristotle and Cicero describe metaphor in terms of clothing according to the character of Crassus in Cicero’s De Oratore, just as clothing was first invented for the purpose of repelling cold but later came to be used for aesthetic reasons, so too metaphor, which was initially employed in order to create names for things, came to be used for the purpose of adornment ( De Oratore 3.155 cf. Metaphors were used, for example, “ ad inlustrandam atque exornandam orationem ” (“for the sake of illuminating and decorating speech” Cicero, De Oratore 3.152). One of these, attested since Aristotle’s Poetics and Rhetoric, arose from language for decoration. 2Ģ In the pages that follow, Demandt investigates a number of ancient meta-metaphors that continue to live on in the ways that we discuss lexical transferences today. “Besides this terminological classification of metaphors, Aristotle himself describes the relationship of the two modes of usage in metaphorical language. “Neben dieser begrifflichen Klassifizierung von Metaphern beschreibt Aristoteles das Verhältnis der beiden Verwendungsweisen seinerseits in bildlicher Rede. ![]() ![]() 1 In the introduction to his book on metaphors for history, Alexander Demandt notes this feature of the trope with reference to Aristotle’s Poetics and Rhetoric :ġ. It is, however, possible to push things further: since Aristotle, it turns out, the western vocabulary for metaphor has itself been largely metaphorical. 2 (.)ġ We have seen how much of the language used by Greek critics to describe style came about by metaphor Aristotle ( Rhetoric 1405b34-1406b19), for example, notes that the overuse of compounds, outlandish words, epithets, and metaphors creates “frigidity” of style (“τὸ ψυχρόν ”) and detracts from the “clarity” of writing (“τὸ σαφές ”): these rhetorical terms were transferred from other domains.
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