Definition:
An original comparison that calls attention to itself as a figure of speech. Contrast with conventional metaphor. See also:
Examples and Observations:
- "Her tall black-suited body seemed to carve its way through the crowded room."
(Josephine Hart, Damage, 1991) - "Fear is a slinking cat I find
Beneath the lilacs of my mind."
(Sophie Tunnell, "Fear") - The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough."
(Ezra Pound, "In a Station of the Metro") - "Those images that yet
Fresh images beget,
That dolphin-torn, that gong-tormented sea."
(W.B. Yeats, "Byzantium") - "By using metaphors, much more can be conveyed, through implication and connotation, than through straightforward, literal language. Take the case of . . . that literary metaphor dolphin-torn: what exactly is Yeats suggesting about the sea, and how else could this have been expressed? Just as writers convey meaning more open-endedly when they use metaphorical language, readers interpret less narrowly than they would literal language. So meaning is communicated between writer and reader in a less precise way, even though the metaphors may seem concrete and vivid. It is this imprecision, this 'fuzziness' of meaning, which makes metaphor such a powerful tool in the communication of emotion, evaluation, and explanation too."
(Murray Knowles and Rosamund Moon, Introducing Metaphor. Routledge, 2006) - "The ground of appropriateness for a new insight provided by a creative metaphor--the compelling condition of the new similarity, what suggests that it 'fits'--cannot be restricted to a complex of established perspectives. For it is this complex, or some part of it, that is challenged by the new insight."
(Carl R. Hausman, Metaphor and Art. Cambridge Univ. Press, 1989)
Also Known As: poetic metaphor, literary metaphor, novel metaphor, unconventional metaphor
