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This chapter argues that some genres are more centrally concerned with the body than others, and that each genre exploits the affordances of its modes and media in unique ways. Thus, graphic illness narratives are characterized not only by their focus on the physical, social, and emotional impacts of disease, but also by their innovative use of the tools and materials of the comics medium, including inherent tensions between words and images, and between sequence and layout. These features impose particular constraints and offer unique opportunities to artists, influencing their choice of metaphors and the shape these metaphors take. For example, in many such works the expected direction of metaphorical transfer from sensorimotor experience to more abstract concepts is reversed, as the diseased body and the nature of visual perception are foregrounded in the artist’s consciousness.

This chapter uses the analysis of 35 graphic illness narratives to identify the various forms that visual metaphor may take in this genre. A novel tripartite classification system that distinguishes between pictorial, spatial, and stylistic metaphors is proposed. Pictorial metaphors, which use images of concrete animate or inanimate objects to stand for something else, have received a lot of scholarly attention in recent years, but this study offers the first systematic description of the other two types of visual metaphor. Spatial metaphors exploit the relative size, arrangement, and orientation of elements on the page to convey more abstract meanings, whereas in the case of stylistic metaphors, features such as color, shape, level of detail, and quality of line are used to indicate an abstract concept or a nonvisual sense perception. These three categories can be further subdivided, and in many instances several distinct types of metaphor are used in combination.

The Introduction sets out the book’s central theoretical concerns regarding the relationship between embodiment and metaphor, and presents the original concept of “dynamic embodiment,” using a page from a graphic illness narrative about Parkinson’s disease as an example. Dynamic embodiment refers to the idea that people’s relationship with their own bodies is never fixed and stable; rather, it is constantly shifting and changing in response to the aging process, physical or mental ill health, and the adoption of new bodily practices, including different ways of communicating. This chapter also introduces the argument that there are, in fact, three distinct forms of the phenomenon that is often subsumed under the collective term “visual metaphor,” namely pictorial, spatial, and stylistic metaphor. The data set and methods of analysis of the study are described and justified, and an outline of the five main chapters and the conclusion is provided.

The conclusion outlines how the notion of “dynamic embodiment” developed throughout the book may challenge traditional notions of embodiment in Conceptual Metaphor Theory, by revealing the complex, shifting nature of individuals’ experiences of their bodies. The new tripartite taxonomy for analyzing visual metaphors draws attention to the many different aspects of visual meanings that are capable of conveying metaphorical meaning, including spatial composition and the stylistic features of both drawings and written words. Another aim of the book has been to raise awareness of the many creative metaphors that tend to occur in graphic illness narratives, which makes this genre particularly well suited to the task of highlighting aspects of the illness experience that may otherwise go unnoticed. These findings have the potential to change the attitudes and practices of both patients and healthcare professionals, encouraging a more thoughtful and imaginative use of illness metaphors.