ABSTRACT
Metaphor is an ancient concept of literary theory, which has been considered in a rhetorical and poetic sense for over two thousand years in the West. In the 20th century, it gradually extended to the fields of philosophy, linguistics, cognitive science, and even natural science and computer science, evolving into a widely used theoretical conception. Etymologically, the word “metaphor” in English is derived from the Greek word “metaphora,” which in turn originates from “meta” and “pherein”. The study of metaphor originates from ancient Greek rhetoric. Aristotle is not the first theorist to study metaphor, but he is the first who systematically defines and interprets metaphor in his work Rhetoric and Poetics. Aristotle has not only initiated the study of metaphor, but proposed and elaborated on two main theoretical threads of metaphor study in Poetics and Rhetoric.
