Metaphor as Moonlighting

Abstract

l.-The Metaphor symposium [Critical Inquiry (Autumn 1978)] is evidence of a growing sense that metaphor is both important and odd-its importance odd and its oddity important-and that its place in a general theory of language and knowledge needs study. Metaphorical use of language differs in significant ways from literal use but is no less comprehensible, no more recondite, no less practical, and no more independent of truth and falsity than is literal use. Far from being a mere matter of ornament, it participates fully in the progress of knowledge: in replacing some stale natural kinds with novel and illuminating categories, in contriving facts, in revising theory, and in bringing us new worlds. oddity is that metaphorical truth is compatible with literal falsity;1 a sentence false when taken literally may be true when taken metaphorically, as in the case of The joint is jumping or The lake is a sapphire. oddity vanishes upon recognition that a metaphorical application of a term is normally quite different from the literal application. Applied literally, the noun sapphire sorts out various things including a certain gem but no lake; applied metaphorically (in the way here in