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Every word denotes, refers to, or labels something in the world, but a symbol (to which a word, of course, may point) has a concre
Search The Glossary
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Every word denotes, refers to, or labels something in the world, but a symbol (to which a word, of course, may point) has a concreteness not shared by language, and can point to something that transcends ordinary experience. Poets such as William Blake and W.B. Yeats often use symbols when they believe in—or seek—a transcendental (religious or spiritual) reality.
A metaphor compares two or more things that are no more and no less real than anything else in the world. For a metaphor to be symbolic, one of its pair of elements must reveal something else trans