Metaphorical-to-Literal Transcendence

And what the heck is that, you might ask. It just sounds fancy but it is actually very simple.

To appreciate this literary technique fully, however, one needs to understand the technicalities of metaphor first.

So, what is a metaphor? A good start is the TEDTalk titled Metaphorically Speaking by James Geary:

I would like to modify a bit:

Geary talked about

X=Y (equal)

Let us change it to

X//Y (parallel)

instead.

So for "Juliet is the sun":

Instead of Juliet=sun, we have Juliet//sun. The importance of which will be clear later.

In my working definition here, a metaphor draws a parallel from the literal plane to the metaphorical plane.

"Juliet is the sun"

"The sun" is on the literal plane. Juliet is on the metaphorical plane, having all the sunny qualities Shakespeare intended for her to have. Maybe she is warm, but nothing to do with temperature. Maybe she is radiant, but nothing to with how many lux she emits.

When we draw parallels, it is important to recognise that nothing is ever equal to something except itself.

So X can never be equal to Y, but there are some aspects of Y that in X we can find similarities to. Juliet is warm, yes, radiant, yes, ball of nuclear fusion,... wait a minute. There are only so many that you can draw parallels, but never all aspects exhaustive.

On the other hand, how many parallels one can possibly draw attests to the genius of the metaphorist. Wikipedia offers Shakespeare's As You Like It passage as a fine example of extended metaphor. I couldn't agree more:

All the world's a stage

And all the men and women merely players;

They have their exits and their entrances,

And one man in his time plays many parts,

His acts being seven ages. -- Shakespeare, As You Like It, Act II, Scene 7

Breaking down:

World//stage, men and women//actors, birth//entrance, death//exit, profession//role, periods of life//acts

This is the power of extended metaphor, to amaze by the many parallels and somehow all of them are coherent, unified in a certain manner or theme.

Now, there is a reason to segregate the two planes and keep them separate. Simply because it can get quite confusing otherwise. But of course rules are meant to be broken right?

Don't judge a book by its cover. But a car is not a book.
-- Seen outside a car showroom

Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read.
-- Groucho Marx

These are what I call metaphorical-to-literal transcendence. It simply means that the metaphorical has been transcended to the literal. 

Let's dissect the first one first: car//book, outer appearance of a car//book cover

So far so good. The metaphor is implied through the cliché and the context that the writing is on a banner outside a car showroom. The second sentence then promptly destroys the parallel and transcends the car from metaphorical to literal plane. A car is not a book. Of course! They exist in different planes in the first place. The ruination of the metaphor is a clever ploy, since it forces one's mind to consider the literal car, not simply a generalised consumable that is not to be judged by its outer appearance alone.

Second one -- easier to use equality model of metaphor here: outside of a dog=other than a dog, inside of a dog=dog innards

It is quite clear that the first sentence, 'outside' is meant metaphorically, but in the second 'inside', defying the logical pattern, is meant literally.

Bottom line, what does this literary technique serve?

It should be noted that the obfuscation of metaphorical and literal planes is, as I mentioned, exception rather than the rule, so it has the novelty, defiance-tinged kind of impact, but it has to be used sparingly.

Last thing. If you notice, I have explained metaphorical-to-literal transcendence using 'planes', which is itself a metaphor. That just means that the whole article itself is metaphorical-to-literal transcendence, no?

The first thing that dissolves in alcohol is dignity.
-- Anon