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Simile is much less investigated than metaphor, although it occurs as frequently in discourse. This paper aims to provide an account of similes in English, which serves as the starting point for an exploration of the problems they can pose when translated into Italian. First, it deals with the nature and function of similes, the criteria for their classification, and their interpretation. Then, it examines a range of similes illustrating the translation problems they can pose, and discusses the strategies to adopt for each problem stated. The data discussed are taken from English texts belonging to various textual genres, and their translations into Italian.

Metaphors are ubiquitous in natural language; in fact, no language without metaphors is known. But can we construct a language without metaphors? An issue that is particularly relevant to this question is the relation between metaphor and simile. Some argue that metaphors are a type of (elided) simile, whereas others claim that the two phenomena differ in kind. Ideally, a way to settle the dispute would be to find a language that contains similes but not metaphors. There is no such actual language. But two science fiction authors have attempted to conceive of and describe just such a language. David Brin, in The Uplift War, creates birdlike aliens, whose language is claimed to have similes but not metaphors. However, Brin reproduces utterances of these aliens, in which he reflects their avian nature; and he often does so by metaphor. China Miéville, in Embassytown, also creates aliens whose language is claimed to have similes but not metaphors. However, these similes are frozen, and are actually idioms: they have a fixed, conventional meaning. Later on, the aliens acquire metaphors, and only then do they begin to have, in addition, novel similes. Hence, both Brin and Miéville fail: the former constructs a language that has both similes and metaphors, whereas the other constructs a language that initially has neither, and later acquires both simultaneously. Science fiction authors are, after all, humans, and are bound by the constraints of human languages. Hence, their failure to construct a language that contains similes but not metaphors tells us that the two phenomena are fundamentally very close. To the extent that it is possible to construct a language without metaphors, it appears that it would have to do without similes too.

This paper presents a phenomenon that has attracted little attention despite being relatively frequent and very productive in spoken language. The aim of this study is to prove that the ‘ADJ as NOUN’ frame, which is commonly used to form comparative phrases and similes, is also employed to intensify the meaning of predicative adjectives in both English and Czech but without the element of comparison. This study analyses data from two spoken corpora; the Spoken BNC2014 for English, and ČNK — ORAL_v1 for Czech. The corpus data serve as evidence confirming the existence of this pattern as a distinct entity with its own functions alongside being used in comparisons and similes. The results further show that both languages display semantic incongruence between the adjectives and nouns co-occurring in this structure. However, each language uses nominal elements from different lexical fields. Finally, the paper discusses potential issues of interpretation and the general motivation behind the usage of intensifying post-modification.

Literary synaesthesia is characterized by a syntactic ductility that allows it to interact with other rhetoric configurations, such as the simile. The aim of this essay is to describe this kind of interaction in the literary context. In the first part of the article we illustrate the functionality of synaesthesia, and we also focus our attention on the structure of the simile, describing the semantic relationship between the tertium comparationis and the other elements of the comparative construction. Then we give some examples from Romanian literature, in order to provide a systematization of this rhetoric combination, identifying two main processes: the "synaesthetic simile" and the "comparative-based synaesthesia". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In his panegyric for the third consulship of Honorius, Claudian compares the emperor, willing to fight alongside Theodosius, to a young lion that despises its mother's nurture and goes hunting with its father. This simile shows verbal echoes of and structural parallels with an epic simile between a cub and the hero Parthenopaeus in Statius's Thebaid. Nevertheless, significant differences may well be noted; for instance, while Statius draws his comparison in a tragic atmosphere, Claudian intends to extol Honorius's bravery and indirectly to praise Theodosius. Horace's simile between Drusus and a young lion in Carm. IV 4 has a similar function: his praise for Drusus is aimed at Augustus. Claudian recalls Horace's ode also through the lexical reference fulva mater and the allusion to the growth of the cub's teeth. Last, both Claudian's and Horace's poems could be considered as belonging to the epinician genre. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Statius’ Thebaid 11.315-23, the poet uses a striking simile in order to describe Jocasta’s attempt to stop Eteocles from confronting Polynices on the battlefield. He compares her to Agave when she brings her son’s head to Dionysus. This paper explores the ‘matrix of possibilities’ for this passage constituted by intra- and intertexts from the accounts of other women, mostly mothers, whose characterization in other epic poems, tragedies, historiography or Statius’ Thebaid itself reflects on aspects of Jocasta here and make her, in turn, the Roman mother, the pious mother, the Theban mother, the grieving mother, the epic mother. It will show that there are more facets to Jocasta’s characterization than madness and nefas.

The phenomenon of metaphor is more prevalent than generally admitted by philosophers, and it raises two main questions: "what is metaphorical meaning"? And how do hearers grasp metaphorical meaning? Theorists have thought that metaphor is a matter of bringing out similarities between things or states of affairs. Davidson argues that the stimulation of comparisons is causal. The Naive Simile Theory says that metaphors abbreviate literal comparisons. For the Figurative Simile Theory, metaphors are short for similes themselves taken figuratively. Searle uses Gricean apparatus to explain metaphorical meaning as speaker meaning. A further theory of metaphor is based on the phenomenon of single words' analogical differentiation into hosts of distinct but related meanings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A detailed survey of the similes in Argonautica III, compared to the Homeric similes, shows that Apollonius very largely draws his inspiration from his models, mainly in the form and the words. However, he shifts the Homeric similes away from their original context to re-model them to his personal intention. In the first part of book III, the similes follow a common desire to show how many troubles love provokes in Medea’s soul and behaviour. In the second part, Jason’s ordeals provide the occasion for war images describing the preparation of the hero, but thereafter Apollonius resorts to a craftsmanship and agricultural register for evoking tasks that actually consist of hitching up, ploughing, sowing and harvesting. The most remarkable fact is that some comparisons grouped near the end of the book seem to correspond to no Homeric scheme, as if narrating this untold ordeal had the result of freeing Apollonius more and more from his dependance to Homer.

In this article I show how Nicander, in his Alexipharmaca, reappropriates a standard epic practice, the use of similes, and how he uses these for ends that are not purely ornamental, but which answer as much to the construction of his hexameter poem as to the mythological or metapoetic discourse into a technical one. But the similes are not only a window open on another discursive type: they are also at times fully operative in the technical discourse and so take full part in medical description.