Defining Metaphor: Problems and Issues

The first challenge facing anyone approaching the study of metaphor is how to define it. Most literary critics who deal with the subject incidentally rather than as their main focus tend to skirt the issue, but all clearly have certain parameters in mind by which they delineate the phenomenon they are describing. What then perplexes the reader coming to grips with the critical literature on a particular author is the extent to which these parameters can differ. Even the briefest glimpse at recent scholarship on Dante reveals how broad a spectrum of meanings can be covered by the single term ‘metaphor’. While lack of explicit definition among critics whose primary interest lies elsewhere is understandable, the kind of study I am proposing has no such excuse. Without a clear definition of metaphor at its outset, what is already a slippery subject will soon prove unmanageable, and the discussion that follows will risk disappointing by what it omits as much as it risks confusing by what it includes.