19 Quotes by David Punter

Metaphor thus becomes, crucially, a contested field; it also becomes visible as a weapon in the ideological armoury by means of which history is interpreted, or reinterpreted, from the perspective of the conquerer.

Thus, one might say, the dream can never be read literally, because its very substance is metaphor...

... metaphor is never static, and rarely innocent.

… ‘metaphor’ itself is not a static, ahistorical term; it is not as though there is a pervasive, universal concept of metaphor which can be applied, like a template, to all ages and cultures.

...the struggle to form the new is inevitably already shaped by the metaphors by which we have come to live.

...only too frequently, our metaphors are not our own.

All public life sustains itself through metaphor.

Does metaphor mean something more than, or different form, or in some sense beneath, what it appears to say; or is the meaning of a metaphor precisely what it does say.

…metaphors themselves are time-bound and ideologically motivated.