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Metaphor is not composed of two elements, one of which amplifies or explains or even transforms the other. From Aristotle on metaphor has been understood as the creation of a THIRD FIELD OF MEANING.
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Certain traditions (like Latinate rhetoric) have emphasized this decorative aspect of metaphor, which primarily relies on the idea of a metaphor as being an addition to the original statement. But that’s really more characteristic of rhetoric.
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Even poetry that seems to function in that way, “using” the “vehicle” to make the “tenor”(the original object) more interesting or appealing or whatever, in I.A. Richards’s terminology, turns out to be on examination transformative. We could look at countless examples.
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Anyway too much more to say but there is surrealism, symbolism, imagism (which is a western interpretation of far more developed poetic cultures, classical Chinese and Japanese poetry especially), and many other ideas about metaphor that are endlessly interesting and usefuL
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