How does the metaphor work?
Imagine a nut. A nut has a shell that, once removed, yields a nutritious centre. This is what Paul de Man means by the following statement: “when form is considered to be the external trappings of literary meaning or content, it seems superficial and expendable.” The formalists, on the other hand, taught that it is the shell, rather than its content, that is important in literature. So when Paul de Man observes that the trend in literary criticism has moved from form to reference, what interests him is the underlying metaphor that governs how we have up until now always—without thinking about it too much—imagined meaning to come about. That is, before we interpret a text we have already accepted an interpretation—based upon a metaphor—of what interpretation is. It is this unwitting interpretation of interpretation that interests de Man.
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