Comparison With Other Types of Analogy
Metaphors are most frequently compared with similes. The Colombia Encyclopedia, 6th edition, explains the difference as:
- a simile states that A is like B, a metaphor states that A is B or substitutes B for A.
Where a metaphor asserts the two objects in the comparison are identical on the point of comparison, a simile merely asserts a similarity. For this reason a metaphor is generally considered more forceful than a simile.
The metaphor category also contains these specialised types:
- allegory: An extended metaphor wherein a story illustrates an important attribute of the subject.
- catachresis: A mixed metaphor used by design and accident (a rhetorical fault).
- parable: An extended metaphor narrated as an anecdote illustrating and teaching a moral lesson, such as Aesop's fables.
Metaphor, like other types of analogy, can usefully be distinguished from metonymy as one of two fundamental modes of thought. Metaphor and analogy both work by bringing together two concepts from different conceptual domains, whereas metonymy works by using one element from a given domain to refer to another closely related element. Thus, a metaphor creates new links between otherwise distinct conceptual domains, whereas a metonymy relies on the existing links within them.
Read more about this topic: Metaphor
Famous quotes containing the words comparison with, comparison, types and/or analogy:
“What is man in nature? A nothing in comparison with the infinite, an all in comparison with the nothing—a mean between nothing and everything.”
—Blaise Pascal (1623–1662)
“From top to bottom of the ladder, greed is aroused without knowing where to find ultimate foothold. Nothing can calm it, since its goal is far beyond all it can attain. Reality seems valueless by comparison with the dreams of fevered imaginations; reality is therefore abandoned.”
—Emile Durkheim (1858–1917)
“Science is intimately integrated with the whole social structure and cultural tradition. They mutually support one other—only in certain types of society can science flourish, and conversely without a continuous and healthy development and application of science such a society cannot function properly.”
—Talcott Parsons (1902–1979)
“The whole of natural theology ... resolves itself into one simple, though somewhat ambiguous proposition, That the cause or causes of order in the universe probably bear some remote analogy to human intelligence.”
—David Hume (1711–1776)