Comments on: What’s a Meta For?

By: Bob Denham

Bob Denham — Wed, 10 Oct 2012 02:48:37 +0000

Neil,

I’m not aware of anyone who has so radical a view of metaphor as Frye. To him, to say that X is Y is to say that the literal meaning and metaphorical meaning are the same thing. In The Double Vision he speaks of this as imaginative literalism.

By: Neil Lanham

Neil Lanham — Mon, 08 Oct 2012 16:26:31 +0000

Frye is right. The parallel recall that is triggered off the back brain is not similar – it is THE SAME. This is because the totally metaphoric mind of the Double Vision ONLY SEES IN TERMS OF PRINCIPLES OF UNDERSTANDING and it is these principles that are stored deep within us that are brought forward in terms of a different literal happenings but the same principle. In fact principle is the way that the story is stored and what triggers it to be brought forward. If the beholder of the metaphor sees it as similar then they have lost the metaphoric vision and are only seeing in literal terms. They are seeing content and not principle.
We are told that we are now in the information age. Information is valueless if it cannot be correlated into reason – understanding – wisdom.
We all should make polarised lists of what is literal and what is principle to be able to understand what the modern mind has lost from the natural. Neil Lanham

By: Neil Lanham

Neil Lanham — Tue, 02 Oct 2012 16:04:56 +0000

For most of my 74 years, although I did not know what it was, metaphor has haunted me. I have written articles about it and read all I can but no one has yet described for me the mind that is completely metaphorical and I believe that that is because everything that is written is from the external perspective ie not one of them have the gift of complete metaphor. If we talk of it as poetic this indicates that we are seeing it as just a tool for occasional use in the literal seeing world.
Frye, the thinker, saw it in Blake when he refered to the double vision. This for me is the mind that sees everything in two or more aspects at the same time and as he and Jousse also says allows one to see the past,the present and the future at the same time. We must however consider Fryes mind and where he was coming from. He was highly literate and makes the mistake of thinking that it is the educated mind that develops it. Not so if he had been coming from anthropology or folklife he would realise that it was developed by primitive man and fostered in NATURAL man – it is aparent in his language. It is our modern minds in our now artificial world that have lost it and now only see things materially and literally. Benjamin and G E Evans said that. Of course it is similar for it is this similarity that triggers the mind in its instant recall of metaphoric measurement from personal experience and that is also part of our identity. If this rings any bells I would be pleased to hear from you. I believe that there is still a great challenge to be completed. Enjoyed your paper. Neil L

By: Nicholas William Graham

Nicholas William Graham — Mon, 23 Jul 2012 05:28:45 +0000

There are 3 references to that other Canadian Classic 1957,
INSIGHT, in Frye’s work. Most Frye scholars refuse to acknowledge
the book, because they are operating at a higher level, & I think
they are right. Philosophy and Cognitional theory are not within
the horizon of Frye scholars; this is the domain of that lonely
Canadian, author of INSIGHT. Frye recognized its importance and
called it “that damn book.” Lonergan and Frye, in terms of of
displacement, are two sides of the same coin. One without the other
is unbalanced.
NWG

By: Joseph Adamson

Joseph Adamson — Mon, 25 Jun 2012 14:51:58 +0000

To follow up Jim’s and Nicholas’s comments, the implied question in your observation that Frye is one of the only people to talk about metaphor in terms of identity is worth some considering. The simplest answer for me is that Frye is talking about the outcome of metaphor rather than the associative means, or “conceptual blending” (as the cognitivists would say), that make it possible for us to invent new metaphors. A metaphor is possible because of conceptual analogies and verbal and archetypal associations, but the effect of it is identificatory or interpenetrative. In The Scarlet Letter, for example, there is a central organizing metaphor that structures the imagery of the novel around Pearl and the rose-bush, in which the sense of identity is counter-logical, as Frye puts it (that is, it cannot be logically or descriptively true), but also literal (in Frye’s sense) and radical: Pearl is the rose-bush is the garden-forest is prelapsarian Nature. The metaphor is inescapable but very few, if any critics bring this to the fore or even mention it, because, I think, they are critics of the realist or descriptive mode, as most, even very sophisticated critics are.

By: Robert Denham

Robert Denham — Sat, 23 Jun 2012 23:14:30 +0000

Thanks for you comments, Jim. I think it’s true that something metaphorical seems to inhere in many, if not most, words. The idea of “carrying” lurks in the etymology of the word “metaphor” itself. “Metaphor” doesn’t involve us in literal carrying, but it does have the figurative sense of meanings being carried back and forth between the two terms.