Extended and complex metaphor: Study Guide (English Literature 8.4)

One comparison, developed

A metaphor says that one thing is another: “life is a voyage”. It works by asking you to carry over the associations of the second thing (a voyage: a departure, hazards, a harbour) onto the first (life). An extended metaphor keeps developing the same comparison over several lines or a whole poem, so that the reader does not meet one association but a chain of them. A conceit is a particular kind of extended metaphor: an elaborate, often surprising comparison between two things that seem to have little in common, developed so ingeniously that it becomes persuasive. Conceits are especially common in poetry that argues, and they often compare the natural world, or an object, with a person or a relationship.

It helps to name the two sides:

• The tenor is the thing being described (the lovers’ souls, grief, a person’s life).
• The vehicle is the thing it is compared to (a pair of compasses, a tenant, a voyage).

You can analyse a metaphor without these terms, but they keep your explanation tidy: you are always saying what the tenor is, what the vehicle is, and what the comparison lets you see about the tenor that plain statement could not.

The two-step skill

The course’s skill here has two parts, and good commentary does both.

1. Unpack the individual comparisons. Break the metaphor into elements. For each, say what in the vehicle corresponds to what in the tenor, and what that correspondence suggests. This is the work of reading carefully.
2. Explain how the elements work together. Multiple comparisons or associations can combine and affect one another in complex ways. A detail in one element may change how you read another, or the elements together may add up to a meaning that none of them has alone. This is the step that links the metaphor to the whole poem.

Weak essays only do step 1 as a list (“the fixed foot is the wife, the moving foot is the husband”). Strong essays then say what the combination adds up to (“so the lovers’ separation becomes a movement that completes a circle”).

Complex metaphors also tend to strain or surprise. A conceit may seem too clever, too physical, or even comic. When it does, the strain is usually part of the effect, so ask what the surprise accomplishes: does it make the argument more persuasive, more ironic, more moving?

Worked example 1: a pair of compasses

John Donne’s “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning” (published 1633) is addressed to the speaker’s partner as he prepares to travel. He argues that their love is too refined for separation to hurt it. The central comparison appears near the end. Spelling is modernised here.

If they be two, they are two so
As stiff twin compasses are two,
Thy soul, the fixed foot, makes no show
To move, but doth, if th’ other do.

And though it in the centre sit,
Yet, when the other far doth roam,
It leans and hearkens after it,
And grows erect, as that comes home.

Such wilt thou be to me, who must
Like th’ other foot, obliquely run;
Thy firmness makes my circle just,
And makes me end where I begun.

Tenor and vehicle. The tenor is the two lovers’ souls, which the speaker has said are “one”. The vehicle is a drawing compass: two legs joined at the top, one fixed at a point and one that moves in a circle.

Unpack the elements.

• Joined at the top. The “two” are “stiff twin compasses”, one instrument. The comparison makes their unity physical and mechanical, and the word “stiff” gives the unity strength.
• The fixed foot. The partner’s soul “makes no show / To move” but moves when the other does. The comparison asserts that her stillness is not inactivity: she responds invisibly.
• The roaming foot. The speaker is the one who must “far… roam”, and “obliquely run”: he travels at an angle, not straight, in the geometry of a circle.
• Leaning and standing. The fixed foot “leans and hearkens after” the moving one and “grows erect” as it “comes home”. Attention and eagerness are given physical postures.
• The circle. The partner’s “firmness makes my circle just” (exact, perfect), so that he “end[s] where I begun”.

How the elements combine. Taken one at a time, the elements describe a drawing instrument. Together they make a claim that none makes alone: the journey is not a break but part of a figure, because the circle is only perfect if the moving foot travels and returns while the fixed foot stays firm. The comparison therefore turns separation into a condition of completion. It also relates to an earlier image in the poem: the souls “endure not yet / A breach, but an expansion, / Like gold to airy thinness beat”. That image, too, redefines parting as stretching, not breaking. The two comparisons support one another: gold stretched without breaking and a circle drawn by a moving foot both say that distance extends the bond.

Strain and surprise. A mathematical instrument is an unexpected thing to compare with love. The surprise helps the argument: love that is refined can be described by geometry, because it is exact, not sentimental.

Link to the whole. The conceit supports the poem’s opening instruction to part with “no tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests”, by giving the reader a reason (the circle) as well as an order.

Worked example 2: a flea as a marriage temple

Donne’s “The Flea” (published 1633) is a seduction argument. The speaker points to a flea that has bitten both him and his lover, so that their blood has mingled in its body. Modernised spelling:

Mark but this flea, and mark in this,
How little that which thou deny’st me is;
[…]
This flea is you and I, and this
Our marriage bed and marriage temple is;

and, later, “three sins in killing three” (three lives in one flea).

Tenor and vehicle. The tenor is the sexual union the lover refuses. The vehicle is the flea, which has already done what they have not: mingled their blood.

Unpack the elements.

• Mingled blood. The flea becomes a place where the two are already joined, so the speaker argues that what she refuses is trivial (“How little that which thou deny’st me is”).
• “Marriage bed and marriage temple.” The comparison raises a flea to the status of the most serious places in a human life. It is absurdly grand, and the absurdity is part of the argument.
• “Three lives in one flea”. The flea contains him, her and itself, so killing it would be a triple act (“three sins in killing three”): murder, self-murder and sacrilege.

How the elements combine. Each element grows out of the previous one: mingled blood makes a union, the union makes a marriage, the marriage makes a temple, and a temple makes killing a sacrilege. The comparison escalates until the lover’s small act of crushing the flea carries the weight of a crime. A reader can enjoy the wit while feeling the manipulation.

Strain and surprise. The conceit is so extravagant that it exposes itself as a trick. This is an effect, not a flaw: the strain reveals a speaker whose argument depends on cleverness and who is more interested in persuading than in tenderness. The poem then has the lover kill the flea, and the speaker turns even that act into a new argument: she is no weaker for the flea’s death, so she will lose just as little honour by yielding. That reversal is another surprise.

Link to the whole. The conceit lets the poem argue and play at the same time, and the way it escalates and then collapses shows that wit can serve seduction and, simultaneously, make the seducer a little ridiculous.

Weak and strong versions side by side

Weak	Why it falls short	Stronger
“Donne compares the lovers to compasses.”	Names the comparison; says nothing about what it does.	“Donne makes the fixed foot’s stillness a form of response, so the partner’s calm is love in action.”
“The fixed foot is the woman and the moving foot is the man.”	A list; no meaning drawn out.	“The fixed foot’s leaning and standing erect make the circle’s perfection depend on her steadiness, so the separation becomes a stage in a completed figure.”
“The flea is a funny image.”	Subjective and unspecific.	“By calling the flea a ‘marriage temple’, the speaker inflates a trivial insect to a sacred space, which makes his argument sound clever and a little absurd.”
“The metaphor shows that love is strong.”	Vague; the same sentence could be about any love poem.	“The circle can only be ‘just’ if the moving foot travels and returns, so the conceit shows love enduring through distance, not despite it.”

Common misconceptions

• “A conceit is just a long simile.” It is an extended metaphor, which asserts that one thing is another and argues from it.
• “I should explain every detail.” Choose the elements that carry your claim; two or three well-explained ones are enough.
• “The comparison must be logical.” Conceits are often illogical on purpose, and the strain is the effect.
• “Naming tenor and vehicle is the analysis.” It is the setup. The analysis is what the comparison reveals.
• “The metaphor is always about the poet.” The speaker is a character in the poem. Attribute the metaphor to the speaker.
• “Elements of the metaphor are independent.” Look for how they affect each other; that is the second step of the skill.

Where this leads

Try the practice questions, then use the revision notes and checklist. In Topic 8.5, a different kind of comparison, a reference to shared knowledge, brings its own associations into a poem.