https://doi.org/10.1177/0963947019865450 Language and Literature 1–20 © The Author(s) 2019 Article reuse guidelines: sagepub.com/journals-permissions DOI: 10.1177/0963947019865450 journals.sagepub.com/home/lal Metaphorical patterns in Anthropocene fiction Marco Caracciolo , Andrei Ionescu and Ruben Fransoo Ghent University, Belgium Abstract This article explores metaphorical language in the strand of contemporary fiction that Trexler discusses under the heading of ‘Anthropocene fiction’ – namely, novels that probe the convergence of human experience and geological or climatological processes in times of climate change. Why focus on metaphor? Because, as cognitive linguists working in the wake of Lakoff and Johnson have shown, metaphor plays a key role in closing the gap between everyday, embodied experience and more intangible or abstract realities – including, we suggest, the more-than-human temporal and spatial scales that come to the fore with the Anthropocene. In literary narrative, metaphorical language is typically organized in coherent clusters that amplify the effects of individual metaphors. Based on this assumption, we discuss the results of a systematic coding of metaphorical language in three Anthropocene novels by Margaret Atwood, Jeanette Winterson, and Ian McEwan. We show that the emergent metaphorical patterns enrich and complicate the novels’ staging of the Anthropocene, and that they can destabilize the strict separation between human experience and nonhuman realities. Keywords Narrative, contemporary fiction, ecocriticism, stylistics, nature, Anthropocene 1. Introduction In a World Wildlife Fund campaign for climate change created by Belgian design studio BBDO, we see the familiar image of a wafer cone topped with melting ice cream. However, the scoop of ice cream was digitally modified to look like the Earth, Corresponding author: Marco Caracciolo, Department of Literary Studies, Ghent University, Blandijnberg 2, Ghent 9000, Belgium. Email: marco.caracciolo@ugent.be 865450LAL 0 0 10.1177/0963947019865450Language and LiteratureCaracciolo et al. research-article 2019 Article