theoryofliteratu00inwell

lmage y Metaphor, Symbol, Myth 209
figure which, except for the specified overlap of its terms, seems
perversely oriented in just the wrong (i.e., a pejorative) di-
rection:
But as some serpent's poison hurteth not
Except it be from the live serpent shot.
So doth her virtue need her here to fit
That unto us, she working more than it.
This is probably the characteristic kind of Radical image: the
more obvious and less perverse example would be the compasses
figure in Donne's "Valediction Forbidding Mourning." But, as
Wells subtly remarks, Radical images can be derived out of
romantically suggestive image-areas such as mountains, rivers,
and seas, if one adopts an "analytic manner." 3S
Lastly, there is the Expansive image, its name linking it, by
contrariety, to the Intensive. If the Intensive is the medieval and
ecclesiastical figure, the Expansive is that of prophetic and
progressive thought, of "strong passion and original meditation,"
culminating in the comprehensive metaphors of philosophy and
religion represented in Burke, in Bacon, in Browne, and pre-
eminently in Shakespeare. By definition, the Expansive image
is one in which each term opens a wide vista to the imagination
and each term strongly modifies the other: the "interaction" and
"interpenetration" which, according to modern poetic theory, are
central forms of poetic action occur most richly in the Expansive
metaphor. We may take examples from Romeo and Juliet:
Yet, wert thou as jar
As that vast shore washt with the farthest sea,
I should adventure for such merchandise.
and from Macbeth:
Light thickens, and the crow
Makes wing to the rooky wood:
Good things of day begin to droop and drowse.
In these last lines, Shakespeare gives us a "metaphorical setting
for crime," which turns into an Expansive metaphor paralleling
night and daemonic evil, light and goodness, yet not in any such
obvious and allegoric fashion, but with suggestive particularity