ABSTRACT
When people study a literary text, they often concentrate on the way it uses language and figures of speech. It is sometimes assumed that these figures of speech, and metaphors particularly, are just ornaments, there to decorate the texts and somehow show an author's skill. Figures of speech (or tropes) occur when language is used in a way that isn't strictly true. We use them all the time. Metaphors and similes are the most common examples. Metaphorical language describes one thing as another. It works by transferring meaning, allowing people to understand one domain of experience in terms of another. Literary metaphors defamiliarise language, but people also use metaphors in everyday speech, often without noticing. Both literary and everyday metaphors rely on basic conceptual metaphors, such as 'life is a journey'. The philosopher Nietzsche argued that metaphors are so taken for granted that we simply think of them as the truth and no longer recognise them as metaphors at all.
