Metaphor in Literature

A detailed revision and refinement of the "semantic theory of metaphor," this book provides a comprehensive philosophical theory explicating metaphor's cognitive contribution. According to the author, metaphor effects a transference of meaning, not between two terms, but between two structured domains of content, or "semantic fields." Semantic fields, construed as necessary to a theory of word-meaning, provide the contrastive and affinitive relations that govern a term's literal use. In a metaphoric use, these relations are projected into a second domain which is thereby reordered with significant cognitive effects. Amply illustrated with sensitive and systematic analyses of metaphors found in literature, philosophy, science, and quotidian language, this book forges a new understanding of the relation between metaphoric and literal meaning.

Christian theology has suffered in modern times from an inability to explain its traditional reliance on metaphor to an audience intellectually formed by empiricism. The author argues that what is needed is not a more "literal" theology, but a better understanding of metaphor. Soskice offers here an account of metaphor and religious language that not only illuminates the way in which theists speak of God, but also contributes to our understanding of the workings of metaphor in scientific theory and other disciplines.

A critical study of the ruses & roles with which William Faulkner masked himself & his characters.

Descriptions of imaginary buildings abound in late medieval and early modern texts in France as in other European countries. The vogue for allegorical buildings was, however, more than a literary fashion: by deploying familiar metaphors of the building in new contexts, writers gained a powerful tool of persuasion. This book explores the complex relationship between metaphor and allegory in the largely neglected but extremely rich corpus of writing that spans the late fifteenth and early sixteenth century in France, and concentrates on the output of Jean Lemaire (c.1473-after 1515), whose fascination with architecture played a crucial role in defining his self-image as a writer. By exploiting the semantic richness of the image of the temple, Lemaire was able to combine panegyric of his patrons with advertisement of his own talents and to promote an ideology of the self-conscious and self-confident writer that was to characterize the stance of Ronsard and the Pléiade in the poet-architect debate of the later sixteenth century.