LITMIR.BIZ

      Preface

      Some years ago I made a study of how great writers and speakers of English have used ancient rhetorical devices as aids to eloquence. Improbably enough, the resulting book – Classical English Rhetoric – attracted a readership, drew some kind reviews, and went through several printings. Now the publisher has kindly consented to this sequel. Its topic is the art of comparison. The chapters that follow aim to show how metaphor has been put to use by masters of the art. The first book was about patterns for the arrangement of words; this one is mostly about patterns of thought. The change in focus is rewarding but calls for a different kind of attention. Whereas in Classical English Rhetoric one could see themes and resemblances on the verbal surface of the illustrations, in this book one also needs to look through the words to the comparative ideas they express. The goal is not just to see what the authors said. It is to see what they saw.

      Despite the greater emphasis on ideas rather than words, this can be considered another book about rhetoric – that is, about the use of language to persuade or otherwise affect an audience. This book and its predecessor draw on the prose of similar times and places, and both were inspired in part by texts on rhetoric that were written for students of the subject in ancient Greece and Rome. Rhetoric now has a bad name; to many people it has come to mean bombast. I wish to help with the rehabilitation of the word, however, and to encourage its use in the honorable way that was common until recently – the sense of “rhetoric” that made it something for Lincoln to study and for Churchill to write about, and that caused it to be considered one of the liberal arts.

      This book also involves matters that are of interest entirely apart from whatever rhetorical value they might have. They concern how our minds convert what we cannot directly say or perceive into what we can. Metaphor may be viewed as a language that we use to interpret and explain things to ourselves as well as to others. This book outlines an elementary vocabulary and grammar of one dialect of that language. The result may be useful to those who wish to improve their fluency in order to better communicate, but also to those who enjoy the language for its own sake. For rhetorical purposes – in other words, as a way of speaking to an audience – the noticeable use of metaphor must be sparing to be effective, and is wholly unsuitable for some occasions.

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