Editing Metaphor (section)

== In rhetoric and literature ==

[[Aristotle]] writes in his work the [[Rhetoric (Aristotle)|''Rhetoric'']] that metaphors make learning pleasant: "To learn easily is naturally pleasant to all people, and words signify something, so whatever words create knowledge in us are the pleasantest."<ref>Aristotle, W. Rhys Roberts, Ingram Bywater, and Friedrich Solmsen. Rhetoric. New York: Modern Library, 1954. Print.</ref> When discussing Aristotle's ''Rhetoric'', Jan Garret stated "metaphor most brings about learning; for when [Homer] calls old age "stubble", he creates understanding and knowledge through the genus, since both old age and stubble are [species of the genus of] things that have lost their bloom".<ref>Garret, Jan. "Aristotle on Metaphor". , Excerpts from Poetics and Rhetoric. N.p., 28 March 2007. Web. 29 Sept. 2014.</ref> Metaphors, according to Aristotle, have "qualities of the exotic and the fascinating; but at the same time we recognize that strangers do not have the same rights as our fellow citizens".<ref>Moran, Richard. 1996. Artifice and persuasion: The work of metaphor in the rhetoric. In Essays on Aristotle's rhetoric, ed. Amelie Oksenberg Rorty, 385–398. Berkeley: University of California Press.</ref>

Educational psychologist [[Andrew Ortony]] gives more explicit detail: "Metaphors are necessary as a communicative device because they allow the transfer of coherent chunks of characteristics – perceptual, cognitive, emotional and experiential – from a vehicle which is known to a topic which is less so. In so doing they circumvent the problem of specifying one by one each of the often unnameable and innumerable characteristics; they avoid discretizing the perceived continuity of experience and are thus closer to experience and consequently more vivid and memorable."<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Ortony |first1=Andrew |title=Why metaphors are necessary and not just nice |journal=Educational Theory |date=Winter 1975 |volume=25 |issue=1 |pages=45–53 |doi=10.1111/j.1741-5446.1975.tb00666.x}}</ref>

===As style in speech and writing===

As a characteristic of speech and writing, metaphors can serve the poetic imagination. This allows [[Sylvia Plath]], in her poem "Cut", to compare the blood issuing from her cut thumb to the running of a million soldiers, "[[Redcoat (British army)|redcoats]], every one"; and enabling [[Robert Frost]], in "The Road Not Taken", to compare a life to a journey.<ref>{{cite web|url= http://www.sylviaplathforum.com/thread2.html |title= Cut |publisher=Sylvia Plath Forum |access-date= 4 March 2012}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.sylviaplathforum.com/index.shtml |title= Sylvia Plath Forum: Home page|website=www.sylviaplathforum.com |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100912170625/http://www.sylviaplathforum.com/index.shtml |archive-date=12 September 2010}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url= http://www.bartleby.com/119/1.html |title= 1. The Road Not Taken. Frost, Robert. 1920. Mountain Interval |publisher= Bartleby.com |access-date= 4 March 2012}}</ref>

Metaphors can be implied and extended throughout pieces of literature.