ABSTRACT
The nature of metaphor, and of figurative language in general, is no less a subject of dispute today than it was even before Quintilian’s time. (For some summaries of recent positions see the essays in Sacks 1979.) Metaphors have been analyzed and classified; distinctions have been made between metaphor and simile, metonymy, synecdoche, analogy, and so on; definitions encompass concepts of borrowing, transference, substitution, resemblance, interaction, and a host of others (see the bibliography in ibid.: 766; see also Preminger 1993, art. “Metaphor”). There seems no end in sight to this debate; thus, rather than entering into it here, I will limit myself to a consideration of some medieval Arab and Persian critical views on metaphor – or more generally comparison or “likening” – and, more importantly, of how, and why, poets employed it.
