Metaphor

In this prodigiously learned meditation, Donoghue (On Eloquence) takes readers through the history of the rhetorical device and its incarnations in poetry, fiction, philosophy, and everyday life. At its most basic, a metaphor draws two otherwise unrelated ideas into a relationship of correspondence, often to highlight surprising or hidden resemblances. Rummaging through an exhaustive collection of linguistic authorities from Aristotle and Aquinas to Vico, Paul de Man, and J.L. Austin, Donoghue analyzes conflicting accounts of how metaphor shapes language and our experience of reality. In chapters that chart such topics as the role of metaphor in the Christian theological tradition or the difficulties in drawing boundaries between metaphor and other figures of speech (such as similes, metonymy, and synecdoche), Donoghue strives to show how metaphors “offer to change the world by changing one’s sense of it.” Along the way, he studies verse by Shakespeare, Milton, Keats, and Stevens, among many others, weaving a thick tapestry of examples to show how metaphors are used and abused. The author’s erudition, however, makes for a diffuse book with an uneven structure and a profusion of quotations whose relevance is not always made clear. While not an easy work, the book successfully plunges readers into the complexities of figurative language and its power to revivify experience. Agent: Georges Borchardt, Georges Borchardt, Inc. (Apr.)