Re: Meta, Meto, Simil, Figurative

At 6:08 pm -0600 25/5/99, Ed Heil wrote:
>Sally and Ray --
>
>I would have to go read _Speaker's Meaning_ or _Poetic Diction_ more
>closely to be sure, but I believe that....
>
>..when Owen Barfield denies that words held a 'metaphorical' meaning
>to premoderns, he is using a very restrictive definition of
>'metaphorical', one which you might use in the phrase "mere metaphor."
>  In this sense, you use a metaphor when you speak of A as if it were
>B, in order to attribute to it some quality C which is possessed by B,
>and that's all.  You might as well have attributed quality C directly
>to A.  On the contrary, Barfield would say that when you spoke of A as
>if it were B (especially if A was an abstraction which did not have
>any other name than B), it was because there was some deep conceptual
>and/or real unity between A and B.
I see - even so, I'm not sure that I'd go along entirely with Barfield even
on that.  I'd find it surprising if there were no examples of the latter in
premoderns.  But I agree it's probable that some of the earlier uses of
'metaphora' were more losely defined than the strict definition Barfield
seems to give.

>To some degree Lakoff captures
>this in his work on metaphor, but he tends to come at it from a very
>empiricist (and humanist?) perspective that puts a very different spin
>on it than Barfield does.
>
>Sally --
>
>I'm really curious now; what bad press did George Lakoff get that
>caused you not to read him?
I've followed the replies to this.  Interesting - must look out Lakoff :)

Ray.