Simile and dissimilarity

Simile is generally explained as an explicit comparison between two things, which presupposes they have features or qualities in common - but equally, there must be essential differences too. This paper pursues these differences, and explores ideas of dissimilarity in simile, here considered as a separate device from metaphor. It then looks at implications for text analysis, in particular the role of simile in articulating the experience of the unknown and the new in narrations of travel. Drawing on texts by three 19th-century explorers (Livingstone, Stanley, Kingsley) and contrasting them with fiction (Conrad), I argue that the dissimilarities within similes reveal much, particularly with respect to ideological meanings on the one hand, and the expression of certainty and uncertainty on the other.