Search engine for discovering works of Art, research articles, and books related to Art and Culture
Javascript must be enabled to continue!
Simile and dissimilarity
View through CrossRef
Abstract
Simile is generally explained as an explicit comparison between two things, which presupposes they have features or qualities in common – but equally, there must be essential differences too. This paper pursues these differences, and explores ideas of dissimilarity in simile, here considered as a separate device from metaphor. It then looks at implications for text analysis, in particular the role of simile in articulating the experience of the unknown and the new in narrations of travel. Drawing on texts by three 19th-century explorers (Livingstone, Stanley, Kingsley) and contrasting them with fiction (Conrad), I argue that the dissimilarities within similes reveal much, particularly with respect to ideological meanings on the one hand, and the expression of certainty and uncertainty on the other.
Title: Simile and dissimilarity
Description:
Abstract
Simile is generally explained as an explicit comparison between two things, which presupposes they have features or qualities in common – but equally, there must be essential differences too.
This paper pursues these differences, and explores ideas of dissimilarity in simile, here considered as a separate device from metaphor.
It then looks at implications for text analysis, in particular the role of simile in articulating the experience of the unknown and the new in narrations of travel.
Drawing on texts by three 19th-century explorers (Livingstone, Stanley, Kingsley) and contrasting them with fiction (Conrad), I argue that the dissimilarities within similes reveal much, particularly with respect to ideological meanings on the one hand, and the expression of certainty and uncertainty on the other.
Related Results
Some Odyssean Similes
Some Odyssean Similes
Perhaps the one feature that makes the Iliad and Odyssey most characteristically Homeric—not Virgilian, nor Apollonian—is the similes. They allow Homer to turn from the material at...
Greek Doctor and Roman Patient
Greek Doctor and Roman Patient
When Juvenal's friend Umbricius is enumerating the manifold occupations which will furnish a livelihood for a starving Greek, he places the practice of medicine between the skill o...
“To Warn Proud Cities”: a Topical Reference in Milton’s “Airy Knights” Simile (<i>Paradise Lost</i> II.531-8)
“To Warn Proud Cities”: a Topical Reference in Milton’s “Airy Knights” Simile (<i>Paradise Lost</i> II.531-8)
In Paradise Lost II.531-8 modern editors often see an allusion to Josephus’ account of armies appearing in the sky shortly before the fall of Jerusalem. In fact, reports of spectra...
Una sepoltura privilegiata a mosaico nella Basilica di Uppenna (Tunisia)
Una sepoltura privilegiata a mosaico nella Basilica di Uppenna (Tunisia)
L’articolo si concentra su una sepoltura privilegiata nella Basilica di Uppenna, in Tunisia. Questa sepoltura fu probabilmente di un vescovo donatista che partecipò nel 411 alla Co...
MACROBIUS, SATURNALIA 5.11.1–3 AND A VIRGILIAN READING
MACROBIUS, SATURNALIA 5.11.1–3 AND A VIRGILIAN READING
Macrobius devotes almost the whole morning of the third day in his Saturnalia to Virgil. Eustathius, in response to a question from Euangelus, examines what Virgil drew from the Gr...
Serpent Error: “Paradise Lost” X, 216–18
Serpent Error: “Paradise Lost” X, 216–18
ABSTRACT
Milton's simile in Paradise Lost X, 218 carries the reader through a chain of associations at first sight uncomfortable but ultimately redemptive. The simil...