With recent concentration on the metaphor/metonymy polarity, comparatively little attention has been paid to the relationship between metaphor and simile. Criticism continues in the view that simile is essentially a metaphor that has come to consciousness, that metaphor is simply an elliptical form of simile; both figures are seen as figures of comparison, the difference between them being structural. Geoffrey Leech (1969), for example, says that ‘metaphoric transference can only take place if some likeness is perceived between tenor and vehicle’ (p. 151) and, further on, that ‘simile is an overt, and metaphor a covert comparison’ (p. 156). Where a distinction is made, the implications explored are not the expressive ones, but the different kinds of generical shadow that each figure casts; David Lodge (1977) concedes: ‘Metaphor, it is sometimes said, asserts identity, simile merely likeness’, but this challenging differentiation is absorbed into the generical remark: ‘… and perhaps on this account the former trope is usually considered the more “poetic”’ (p. 112).

The assumption upon which my own exploration is based is that metaphor and simile, in their ‘pure’ state, are indeed radically different. Metaphor is an identification of one phenomenon with another, simile is a comparison.