Shakespeare and the Study of Metaphor

Abstract

HAVE CHOSEN and the study of as my subject partly because it provides us with two points of reference which, although obvious in their connection, have all too rarely been seen together. One is the work of a great poet and dramatist, the study of which involves a sense of history and practical criticism, the other is of a more theoretical nature: it refers to problems of method and approach and, of course, of theory in the study of metaphor. Both aspects are so vast that-even if I were to confine myself to one of them-I could not possibly hope to exhaust either. Shakespeare's work, as the World Congress reminded us, is as boundless as the sea beyond Vancouver Island. The study of metaphor, in its turn, involves very many disciplines, such as aesthetics, rhetoric, philosophical logic, anthropology, linguistics (structural and historical), and, of course, the theory of literature. But if it were possible to link both the historical criticism of Shakespeare and the theory of metaphor, if we could hope to combine, as it were, a sense of literary history and an awareness of aesthetics, then indeed this would provide us with a perspective which neither practical criticism of Shakespeare's imagery nor a philosophical view of metaphor would care to achieve. To strengthen the links between pure theory and practical interpretation, to comprehend a theory of metaphor in the actual process of its application to and conception in the work of a great poet-that, indeed, might be rewarding and, perhaps, fascinating from both the point of view of practical and theoretical criticism, literary history and aesthetics. To plead for these two points of reference is a little more than mere expediency in grappling with a difficult subject, and it points beyond my introductory remarks to this lecture. Rather, it reflects a point of view from which the work of art and the world of history are, in the last instance, indivisible and from which metaphor is neither an autonomous nor an ornamental aspect of poetry but forms the very core and center of that poetic statement by which man as a social being