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Article: Pre-facing simile vehicles in Dante Gabriel Rossetti's sonnets.(Critical essay)
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- December 22, 2005
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Of late the distinction between metaphor and simile has been blurred. Janet Soskice writes: "... the presence of a 'like' is an aspect of superficial grammar, and in no way impedes meaning. In such cases metaphor and simile, while textually different are functionally the same" (59). The key distinction is not between metaphor and simile, Soskice argues, but between "illustrative simile, and modeling simile or metaphor." It is the latter that presents "a subject that is reasonably well known" to explain "a state of affairs beyond our grasp," whereas the former "compares point to point, two known entities" (60). Thus, what Soskice refers to as the "epistemic ...