What is the aesthetic status of these interactions? I am tempted to answer: that is it, aesthetic. The answer to a further question, ’whose aesthetic?’, is implicit in my opening argument. The aesthetic must be dynamic, representing ’not a having and a resting, but a growing and a becoming’, as Matthew Arnold phrased the human ideal. It must accord with newly recognised possibilities of literature – of any literature – and equally with those long recognised. Above all, if it hopes to illuminate the particular literature in hand, it must be supported by that literature, must not supplant it.

Inasmuch as all imagery embodies the temporary displacement of the terminology ’at issue’ in favour of ’extraneous’ terminology, all imagery embodies a deviation from the terminological norm, albeit a familiar kind of deviation. Metaphor alone has the distinction of achieving this deviation through a simultaneous departure from the normal usage of the language as a whole. This, as is well known, is precisely what the so-called ’dead’ or ’faded’ or ’linguistic’ metaphor does not do. Tree in a family tree, for instance, is a ’dead metaphor’ and involves no departure from normal usage.