Immagini (per l)e parole. La metafora visiva tra occhio innocente e immaginazione / Pictures and/for Words. Visual Metaphor between Innocent Eye and Imagery

Alessandro Cavazzana

Alessandro Cavazzana

Keywords: visual metaphor, metaphor, Noël Carroll, perception, mental images

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to give a critical reading of Noël Carroll’s account of visual metaphors. In particular, I have highlighted the possible issues arising from his proposal, focusing on two aspects: 1) homospatiality is not the pictorial equivalent for the ‘is’ of identity that, according to Carroll, can be found in verbal metaphors of the kind «A is B». The ‘is’ of verbal metaphors predicates an intension of the metaphorizing term - that the interpreter is supposed to grasp through the context - and does not suggest identity between A and B; 2) it is hard to sustain that the comprehension of pictorial metaphors relies on a visual perception not mediated by codes. The article ends taking the moves from one of the final considerations advanced by Carroll – namely that a visual metaphor is a device for encouraging imaginative insights – and moves further, trying to sketch out a theory of visual metaphor leveraging the key role of mental images in cognition.

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