Definition:
A comparison between two unlike things that continues throughout a series of sentences in a paragraph or lines in a poem. See also:
- Metaphor
- What Is a Metaphor?
- Susan Orlean's Extended Metaphor: "Super-Duper"
- Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Metaphor
Examples and Observations:
- "Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune--without the words,
And never stops at all,
"And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.
"I've heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me."
(Emily Dickinson) - "'Extended metaphor' can thus be defined as literary (as opposed to ordinary-language) metaphors that are consciously (as opposed to out of necessity) sustained throughout a text or discourse (as opposed to isolated use). Werth (1994: 84) contends that this type of metaphor is an exclusive property of literary texts. He also has a footnote that draws attention to the use of sustained metaphor in advertising."
(Ingrid Piller, "Extended Metaphor in Automobile Fan Discourse." Poetics Today, Autumn 1999) - "I graduated from the University of Life. All right? I received a degree from the School of Hard Knocks. And our colors were black and blue, baby. I had office hours with the Dean of Bloody Noses. All right? I borrowed my class notes from Professor Knuckle Sandwich and his Teaching Assistant, Ms. Fat Lip Thon Nyun. That’s the kind of school I went to for real, okay?"
(Will Ferrell, Commencement Address at Harvard University, 2003) - "It's at moments like these in a game [of squash] that the essentials of his character are exposed: narrow, ineffectual, stupid--and morally so. The game becomes an extended metaphor of character defect."
(Ian McEwan, Saturday, 2005)
Also Known As: conceit, megametaphor
