ABSTRACT
Contemporary theories of metaphor in cognitive linguistics present a challenge to literary scholars who believe that metaphor differentiates poetry from prose (Brooks 1965). If the same cognitive metaphors can be shown to structure both literary and everyday language, then wherein does the difference lie? If there is a difference, is it linguistic or conceptual? A matter of kind or degree? Of entrenchment or innovation? Of communicative (conventional) discourse or expressive (aesthetic) utterance? Or is it the case that all these questions miss the mark, that to understand poetic metaphor, one needs to probe more deeply into the nature of poetry itself?
