Ricoeur, Paul (1913–2005)

4. Metaphor and narrative

Throughout his writings Ricoeur has been interested in the phenomena of creativity and imagination, and in the 1970s and 1980s he pursued this interest through his extensive studies of metaphor and narrative. The Rule of Metaphor was published in 1975, and the three volumes of Time and Narrative appeared in 1983, 1984 and 1985. Metaphor and narrative are particularly interesting for Ricoeur because they are sites of creativity in language: they are works of displacement and synthesis in which the productive imagination is expressed.

On Ricoeur’s account, the creative character of metaphor stems from the fact that a metaphorical utterance sets up a tension between two terms in a sentence through the violation of a linguistic code. The metaphor emerges through a creative semantic pertinence which reduces the tension established by the incongruous attribution. Metaphor thus operates not simply at the level of words, but rather at the level of the sentence. The emergent meaning can be grasped only through a constructive interpretation, an imaginative restructuring of semantic fields, which makes sense of the sentence as a whole. The creative character of metaphor does not destroy the referential dimension of language but rather endows metaphor with a new kind of referential power: the power to redescribe reality (see Metaphor).

In the case of narrative, the semantic innovation consists in the invention of a plot. By bringing together characters, goals, causes and chance, the plot of a narrative creates something new: a new pattern in the organization of events. To understand this pattern, one must use the imagination to grasp the diverse elements of the plot, integrating them into a complete and intelligible whole. Moreover, just as metaphor has the referential power to redescribe reality, so too narrative has what Ricoeur calls, following Aristotle, a ‘mimetic function’. The invention of plots – or, more generally, the telling of stories – is the means by which we refashion the field of human action and refigure the temporality of human existence. In this respect, suggests Ricoeur, the difference between fictional narratives (such as novels) and historical narratives (that is, works of historical scholarship) is not as great as it might at first appear to be. Of course, historians generally assume that their narratives bear some relation to a past that is presumed to be ‘real’. But, at a more general level, both historical narratives and works of fiction are concerned with the refiguration of the temporality of human existence.

As his writings on metaphor and narrative illustrate, Ricoeur addresses problems which are of interest not only to philosophers but also to individuals in other disciplines. His work has had a significant impact on debates in literary criticism, theology, sociology, anthropology and history. There is a consistent vision that animates Ricoeur’s work, a vision that emphasizes creativity, interpretation and the social-historical embeddedness of human action and existence. But Ricoeur’s work is also distinguished by its generous assessment of other thinkers and its openness to other disciplines and traditions of thought.