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Resemblance and Identity in Wallace Stevens' Conception of Metaphor
Abstract
Aristotle and the classical rhetoricians conceived of metaphor as a figure of
speech in which one thing is given a name or an attribute of another thing on the basis of
some resemblance that exists between the two things. Wallace Stevens conceived of metaphor not as the production of pre-existing resemblances observed in nature but the “creation of resemblance by the imagination” (NA: 72). Resemblance, and not identity, according to Stevens, is the fundamental relation between the two terms of metaphor. This is akin to contemporary accounts of metaphor in terms of the phenomenological or experiential
seeing of one thing as another thing (Yoos 1971; Davidson 1979; Camp 2006a,b; Semino
2008; Ritchie 2013). Seeing one thing as another thing on the basis of resemblance or similarity
implies that the one thing is not the other. I do two main things in this paper: one,
I appraise the theoretical value of Wallace Stevens’ conception of metaphor as the creation
of resemblance by the imagination; and two, I pose a challenge to the view that takes
resemblance as fundamental to metaphor, arguing that in the cases I present, thinking of
the relation as identity and not resemblance, concurs with our ontological commitments
to the things compared in the metaphor. In the final analysis, I suggest that Stevens conception
of metaphor as metamorphosis can meet the challenge: rather than thinking of the
‘is’ (identity) of metaphor as an ‘as’ (resemblance), for Stevens, the ‘as’ (resemblance) of
metaphor metamorphosize into an ‘is’ (identity).
... The seeing-as view conceives of metaphor as a figure of speech in which the is metamorphosis into an as so that when the metaphor says that "x is y", it can be understood as seeing x as y. But I as defend in Kwesi (2018b), in metaphor, the metamorphosis is reversed: seeing x as y, that is, perceiving or creating a resemblance between x and y, involves a transformative process that changes an as into an is so that the metaphorical assertion of "x is y" is a resultant of the transformative process. The "x is y" is an identity statement, a fusion of the x and y into a new reality. ...
DOI: http://doi.org/10.26333/sts.xxxiii1.07
Davidson argues that metaphorical sentences express no propositional contents other than the explicit literal contents they express. He offers a causal account, on the one hand, as an explanation of the supposed additional content of a metaphor in terms of the effects metaphors have on hearers, and on the other hand, as a reason for the non-propositional nature of the “something more” that a metaphor is alleged to mean. Davidson’s account is meant to restrict the semantic notions of meaning, content, and truth, to literal sentences. I argue that the Davidsonian causal account does not satisfactorily account for metaphor’s figurativeness, speakers’ assertion and hearers’ uptake of metaphor, and our discursive practices of using metaphors in disagreements and argumentation. I offer a non-compositional analysis of a semantic account of metaphor within which one can make sense of the applicability of the notions of meaning and content to metaphor. This analysis shows that metaphorical sentences have meanings other than, and in addition to, their literal meanings and what speakers can use them to mean.
... The first response, R1, originates from the observation that there are difficulties involved with appropriating the seeing-as phenomenon to metaphor, and these observations have been made even by those who are not directly commenting on Davidson's account of metaphor. It has been pointed out that not all metaphors take the 'x is y' structure to warrant using a seeing-as perceptual experience for understanding metaphors (Cooper 1984;Tirrell 1991); there are not many similarities between the Wittgensteinian duck-rabbit aspectual seeing and metaphor to warrant extending the use of seeing-as to metaphors (Stock 2013); seeing one thing as another thing does not seem to be applicable to metaphors whose subjects are taken from incommensurable realms (Cooper 1984); it is neither definitional (Moran 1989) nor necessary (Kemp 1991;Tirrell 1991) for an utterance to be a metaphor that someone sees one thing as another thing; seeing-as does not give a plausible account of twice-true metaphors (Kwesi 2018b). ...
In this paper, I take a critical look at the Davidsonian argument that metaphorical sentences do not express propositions because of the phenomenological experience—seeing one thing as another thing—involved in understanding them as metaphors. According to Davidson, seeing-as is not seeing-that. This verdict is aimed at dislodging metaphor from the position of being assessed with the semantic notions of propositions, meaning, and truth. I will argue that the phenomenological or perceptual experience associated with metaphors does not determine the propositional contentfulness or truth-evaluability of metaphors. Truth-evaluability is not inconsistent but compatible with a perceptual model for metaphors. I argue for this partly by showing that seeing-as does not constitute understanding of metaphors when understanding is appropriately construed in terms of being able to use an expression.
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