History of Metaphor

In Our Time

BBC

History

4.6 • 9.2K Ratings

🗓️ 25 November 2010

⏱️ 43 minutes

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Summary

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the history of metaphor. In Shakespeare's As You Like It, the melancholy Jaques declares: "All the world's a stage/And all the men and women merely players." This is a celebrated use of metaphor, a figure of speech in which one thing is used to describe another. Metaphor is a technique apparently as old as language itself; it is present in the earliest surviving work of literature, the Epic of Gilgamesh. Homer developed it into an art form, and his invention of the epic simile was picked up by later writers including Milton. In the Middle Ages the device of allegory underpinned much of French and English writing, while the Metaphysical poets employed increasingly elaborate metaphorical conceits in the sixteenth century. In the age of the novel the metaphor once again evolved, while the Modernist writers used it to subvert their readers' expectations. But how does metaphor work, and what does this device tell us about the way our minds function?With:Steven ConnorProfessor of Modern Literature and Theory at Birkbeck, University of LondonTom HealyProfessor of Renaissance Studies at the University of SussexJulie SandersProfessor of English Literature and Drama at the University of NottinghamProducer: Thomas Morris.

Transcript

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0:45.3	I hope you enjoy the program. Hello we'll be discussing metaphors here's an example
0:50.8	life's but a walking shadow a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and
0:57.7	then he said no more.
0:59.4	It is a tale told by an idiot full of sound and fury signifying nothing.
1:04.8	Macbeth mourning the death of his wife in one of the best known literary examples of
1:08.8	metaphor which is a figure of speech which compares one thing with another. Metaphore has been with us for millennia.
1:15.1	His epic poems, Homer turned it to an art form.
1:18.0	Medieval writers were obsessed with it.
1:19.8	Renaissance poets employed it so lavishly that Samuel Johnson later complained that art had been
1:24.5	ransacked for illustrations, comparisons and illusions. Shakespeare immortalized it. Dickens virtually
1:31.0	reinvented it and in recent years thinkers have become fascinated once
1:34.3	more by what metaphor is and what it does.
1:37.9	With me to discuss the history of metaphor are Julie Sanders, Professor of English Literature
1:41.9	and Drama at the University of Nottingham, Steve Connor, Professor of English literature and drama at the University of Nottingham,
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