Detailed metaphor or How to hit a "living arrow" in the reader's heart

2024 Author: Henry Conors | [email protected]. Last modified: 2024-02-12 02:43

It would be difficult to imagine fiction (both classical and modern) without metaphors. It is metaphors that can be attributed to the central tropes used in the composition. Such rhetorical constructions make it possible to make any narrative realistic, convey a certain emotional range to the reader.

Multiple psychological studies have confirmed that it is metaphorical images that are most strongly imprinted in a person's memory. It is with the help of such an associative series that the reader can recreate in his thoughts a picture of what he has read.

The real "prom queen" is an extended metaphor. It makes it possible to simultaneously convey a whole set of images, and through them - a certain thought or idea. An extended metaphor is consistently carried out throughout a large fragment of text. Often, writers use this technique for word games, for example, using the metaphorical meaning of a word or expression next to a direct one to get a comiceffect.

Unlike other tropes that make literary speech more expressive, a metaphor can exist as a separate phenomenon when it becomes the author's aesthetic end in itself. At this moment, the essence of the statement loses its decisive significance, the unexpected meaning comes to the fore, the new meaning that it acquires through the use of a metaphorical image.

The very meaning of the word "metaphor" is rooted in ancient Greece. This word is translated as “figurative meaning”, which fully explains the very essence of the trail. By the way, ancient literature was richer in epithets than in metaphors. Nevertheless, in the work of Pindar, Aeschylus, Homer and many other prominent figures in the world of literature of that time, these techniques are used very actively. It is noteworthy that some works (in particular, we are talking about the mythology of the ancient Greeks) can be safely called the personification of what a detailed metaphor might look like. After all, absolutely every image, regardless of whether it was about any of the deities or their actions, carried a certain subtext, an analogy with the life of mere mortals.

No other technique can so vividly convey to the reader the picture presented to the eyes or imagination of the author as an extended metaphor. Examples of its use can be found both in classical ancient literature and in later ones. This technique was not lost sight of by our compatriots. For example, expandedthe metaphor has become one of the main distinguishing features of the work of Sergei Yesenin (“The day will go out, flashing by the fifth golden …”, “At the wattle fence, the overgrown nettle dressed up with bright mother-of-pearl …”, etc.). The notorious Oscar Wilde was a real master of metaphors.

True masters of the word often combine detailed and individual author's metaphor in their creations. This is what can give any work, poetic or prose, a unique flavor and atmosphere.