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Peter Stockwell,

The Metaphorics of Literary Reading

Year: 2000
Topics: Metaphor;
Disciplines: Linguistics;

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Over thirty years ago, Christine Brooke-Rose (1958), began her book on metaphor by observing that most studies had concentrated on the ‘idea-content’ rather than the surface expression of metaphors. The situation today has altered only in the sheer volume of the imbalance, and Brooke-Rose’s (1958) work remains the most comprehensive treatment of the range of possible surface realizations of metaphor reflecting the New Critical concern with ‘the words themselves’. However, in this paper, a procedural perspective replaces such a strictly formalist treatment, looking at how these forms are processed in reading. This approach in itself renders less distinct the line between a formalist and a conceptual treatment. The design of the paper reflects these concerns. The discussion in the next section of surface realizations of metaphors leads into a structural delineation of metaphoric levels. This is then given a procedural dimension (in 4.2), with a cline of processing difficulty suggested alongside the relative formal complexity of metaphors.

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