ABSTRACT
If rhetoric is an outmoded discipline, its influence lives on in the present-day study of literature, at least in the 'figures of speech' (above all, metaphor), which form an important part of critical vocabulary. Neither the traditional 'definitions' of the rhetorical manuals, nor those of the more recent manuals of usage, provide a satisfactory account of these terms; and attempts to elucidate them by reference to the psychology or philosophy of language have met with only limited success, largely, it seems to me, because of the inadequacy of the linguistic part of the writers' explanatory equipment. In consequence, the subject of rhetorical figures has become an unjustifiably neglected department of literary education. 1
