'Wherefore sweetheart? What's your metaphor?': Figurative Language and the Historical Work of the Literary Text

Abstract

History is at the center of figurative language, which is anchored in its own cultural moment but is also an evolving product of its own linguistic past and temporal relations. In this paper I argue that a consideration of figurative language, understood as an ideologically significant cultural practice, is essential to any discussion of the relation of literary form to the new historicist project. If we contemplate the notion that literary form is the index of history, then figurative language is its mode of record. Our world is constituted figuratively; the tensions, fissures and paradoxes created by the competing figurations that frequently disturb early modern literary texts, and the contradictions and anxieties of the society and culture to which these texts belong, are deeply implicated in one another.