Shakespeare: the metaphorical terrorist

„News that a US government intelligence body is going to start analysing the metaphors used in various languages will have brought wry smiles to the faces of writers and critics. Presumably, »Metaphor Program« agents won't restrict themselves to metaphors as that particular word is often used metonymically for the whole of figurative language – similes, symbols or indeed any use of language that appears to be standing in for something else or representing something else. That in itself is no simple matter, as we shall see, but let it stand for the moment.

»I wandered lonely as a cloud ...« to which we are entitled to ask, »What's lonely about a cloud?« It's a pretty rare Lake District sky that gives us one cloud on its own. But who says a lonely cloud would have to be on its own to be lonely? Maybe clouds are just lonely things – full of a sense of their isolation in an alienated world. If we find ourselves grasping at straws here, Wordsworth gives us help: »... that floats on high o'er vales and hills«, which suggests that he's talking about the cloud's detachment from the earth. It's the higher-than-hills-ness, floatiness of the cloud that is important.

This is the kind of speculation that metaphor-divining specialises in and it's fun to think of US spooks chewing over such matters – though presumably they will hire patriotic literature graduates to do the job.”