Editing Metaphor (section)

==Historical theories==

Aristotle discusses the creation of metaphors at the end of his ''[[Poetics (Aristotle)|Poetics]]'': "But the greatest thing by far is to be a master of metaphor. It is the one thing that cannot be learnt from others; and it is also a sign of genius, since a good metaphor implies an intuitive perception of the similarity in dissimilars."<ref>Cf. ''The Rhetoric and Poetics of Aristotle'', ed. [[Friedrich Solmsen]] (New York: Random House, 1954), 1459a 5–8.</ref>

[[Baroque]] [[Literary theory|literary theorist]] [[Emanuele Tesauro]] defines the metaphor "the most witty and acute, the most strange and marvelous, the most pleasant and useful, the most eloquent and fecund part of the human [[intellect]]". There is, he suggests, something divine in metaphor: the world itself is God's poem<ref>{{cite book|page=578|title=Cassell Dictionary Italian Literature|year=1996|isbn=9780304704644|publisher=Bloomsbury Academic}}</ref> and metaphor is not just a literary or rhetorical figure but an analytic tool that can penetrate the mysteries of God and His creation.<ref>{{cite book|title=Pittoresco. Marco Boschini, His Critics, and Their Critiques of Painterly Brushwork in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Italy|first=Philip|last=Sohm|year=1991|publisher=Cambridge University Press|isbn=9780521382564|page=126}}</ref>

[[Friedrich Nietzsche]] makes metaphor the conceptual center of his early theory of society in [[On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense|''On Truth and Lies in the Non-Moral Sense'']].<ref>{{cite web|url= http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/phl201/modules/Philosophers/Nietzsche/Truth_and_Lie_in_an_Extra-Moral_Sense.htm|title=T he Nietzsche Channel: On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense|work= oregonstate.edu}}</ref> Some sociologists have found his essay useful for thinking about metaphors used in society and for reflecting on their own use of metaphor. Sociologists of religion note the importance of metaphor in religious worldviews, and that it is impossible to think sociologically about religion without metaphor.<ref>{{cite web|last= McKinnon|first= A. M.|year= 2012|title= Metaphors in and for the Sociology of Religion: Towards a Theory after Nietzsche|work= Journal of Contemporary Religion|volume= 27|issue= 2|pages= 203–216|url= http://aura.abdn.ac.uk/bitstream/2164/3056/1/Nietzsche_religion_metaphor_for_repository.pdf}}</ref>