La metáfora en Aristóteles, Poetica 21. 1457 b 7-25

Abstract

The metaphor as a structure is the same in the Rhetoric and in the Poetics, but its function is different: it is peripheric in the Rhetoric, while it is central in the Poetics. The text, where the definition is included, has two parts: the first one gives a definition, which the author of the paper would analyse as a metonymy and a synecdoche —both terms not used by Aristotle—, and the second one which is the definition of the metaphor itself specified by Aristotle as an analogical metaphor. Both parts of the definition are dominated by a general and comprehensive definition, ὀνόματος ἀλλοτρίου ἐπιφορά. This definition hides connotations of movement, deflection and substitution of the meaning. The terms genus and species are universal in significando, but not in essendo, and their relationship is based on the specific difference. The analogical process is the only way of communication among different genuses through a proportion whose ratio is the equality, ἱσότης, when you are dealing with numbers, and the similarity, when dealing with other things. The theory that the metaphor is an abridged comparison is not found in Aristotle. The comparison is an enlarged metaphor.