The role of the metaphor in modern critical approaches to Shakespeare

Edmunds, Donald Paul (1975) The role of the metaphor in modern critical approaches to Shakespeare. University of Southampton, Doctoral Thesis.

Abstract

This thesis is a response to the tendency of many modern critics to attach special importance to Shakespeare's use of the metaphor. The questions from which it grew are: How have critics since Bradley conceived of the meraphor; and how ha-:e their ideas about the metaphor influenced their readir.:s of Sha' & .espeare?The inquiry in the main is confined to the work of critics who came to prominence in the 1930's: J. Middleton Murry, G. Wilson Knight, Caroline Spurgeon, W. Clemen, V. Empson, F.R. Leavis, L.C. Knights and D.A. Traversi.Seen in the light of a theory of the metaphor suggested by Ryle and enlarged by other analysts of language, the ideas about the metaphor of some of these critics are shown to be confused or mistaken. The notion that the metaphor register a similarity or focuses a meaning that exists before its formulation in metaphorical form is the most frequent and far-reaching error.Against this is set a view that defines the metaphor as a deliberate 'category-mistake', or a breach of logical propriety. The metaphor is regarded as presenting something in the idiom appropriate to something else, of a different logical category. Meaning ensues from the interaction of the taco terms: thou-:hts associated with one term are active with thoughts associated with the other.The fallacy that the metaphor embodies an insight that is pre-verbal becomes especially significant; in the work of Wilson Knight; in a celebrated statement, endorsed by several critics, he likens the Shakespearean play to an 'expanded metaphor'. A mistaken conception of the metaphor is thus held up as a model of the Shakespearean play. Moreover, Wilson Knight's interpretation of his model is seer, to correspond point for point with Eliot's conception of the work of art as an 'objective correlative'.Wilson Knight's model and Eliot's theory unite in misdirecting critical attention; a major effect is apparent in some modern assessments of Hamlet and Othello. Critical attention is directed away from the plays themselves to a 'vision' or 'philosophy', which the play is supposed to project. The outcome is an impaired responsiveness to the living irnediacy of the plays and a tendency to interpret a hypothetical 'vision' rather than the actual play.

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