This paper is intended to supplement the earlier study in which I introduced and defended an “interaction view of metaphor” (namely, Black, 1962b, referred to hereafter as Metaphor). A reader unfamiliar with that study will find a summary in the section entitled “The Interaction View Revisited.”

I shall try here to amplify my original formulation by explicating the grounds of the metaphors of “interaction,” “filtering,” and “screening,” which I used in trying to understand how metaphorical statements work. I shall add some suggestions about the relations of a metaphor to its grounding resemblances and analogies (somewhat neglected in Metaphor), with the hope of also shedding some further light on the connections between metaphors and models (for which, see Black, 1962c).

This occasion gives me an opportunity to take some notice of the numerous criticisms, mostly friendly, which Metaphor has received since its original publication. Pleased though I am at the widespread acceptance of the interaction view, I agree with Monroe Beardsley, Ted Cohen, Paul Ricœur, and others that more work will be needed before the power and limitations of this approach to the subject can be fully appreciated.

Reasons for current interest in metaphor

John Middleton Murry's essay, “Metaphor” (Murry, 1931), opens with the remark that, “Discussions of metaphor – there are not many of them – often strike us at first as superficial.” Today both comments would be inappropriate.