Abstract
In order to prove its mettle, a critical ideology wishing to make a place for itself on the contemporary scene must wrestle with one of the oldest problems in literary theory — the description and treatment of figurative language in general, and of metaphor in particular. The ‘problem’ of metaphor is inscribed in the oldest critical text of the western literary tradition: ‘Metaphor’, Aristotle tells us, ‘is the application of an alien name by transference …’ (Poetics, 99). Nearly every subsequent commentator has found Aristotle’s terse definition in some way inadequate; as Karsten Harries has written, Aristotle views metaphor as ‘an improper naming’ (74), a definition which provokes more questions than it answers.
As a tissue tolerably intricate it was a carpet with a figure of its own; but the figure was not the figure I was looking for.
Henry James, ‘The Figure in the Carpet’
‘Everyone wanders around having his own individual perceptions. These, like balls of different colors and shapes and sizes, roll around on the green billiard table of consciousness …’. Kevin stopped and began again. ‘Where is the figure in the carpet? Or is it just … carpet?’
Donald Barthelme, Snow White
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Dettmar, K.J.H. (1990). The Figure in Beckett’s Carpet: Molloy and the Assault on Metaphor. In: Butler, L.S.J., Davis, R.J. (eds) Rethinking Beckett. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-20561-5_4
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