More Than Cool Reason: A Field Guide to Poetic Metaphor

A very clear straightforward exploration of language and metaphor.

Poems use metaphor, obviously, but is this in the same as we use metaphor everyday. The answer is perhaps surprisingly yes and surprisingly no. Poets can't just make it up, they are not humpty dumpty in Alice. They will use the eternal verities that are central to our language - e.g. love is fire or love is madness or time is an object "he disappeared into the night" BUT like the chess grand master using the same opening as a novice so with the poet, the grandmaster attempts to play "off book" to a move as yet undocumented, after a well known opening. So the poet will use a 'cliched' metaphor and then attempt make again something new. And this book describes this process in wonderful detail.

Soweit ich sehe ist dies noch immer die einzige gut lesbare Studie, die sich der Frage nach dem Unterschied zwischen "conceptual metaphors" in der Alltagssprache und jenen in der Lyrik widmet und zu dem provokativen Schluss kommt, dass selbst die komplexesten Metaphern eines Shakespaere-Sonetts auf den selben "basic concepts" basieren wie die gebräuchlichsten Redensarten, das Origialität also, wenn überhaupt, nicht auf den konzeptuellen Ebene stattfindet, sondern lediglich in der Erweiterung und Akkumulation altbekannter "basic metaphors". Das einzige, was mich an dem Buch stört ist, dass die Abgrenzung gegen andere Metapherntheorien auf der Basis von summarischen Labels ("Literal Meaning Theory", "Dead metaphor theory", etc.) stattfindet und nicht in der Auseinandersetzung mit einzelnen Texten und Autoren, so dass man sich selbst zusammenreimen muss, wer oder was hier kritisiert wird, so dass die vermeintliche Allgemeinverständlichkeit und Lesbarkeit des Buches in ein etwas mühseliges Rätselspiel mündet.

That's what i needed for my thesis! The idea's presented in this book you can also found in other books of Lakoff, but the title looks great in my list of used literature;)

This 1989 book is an early application of brain science applied to language and to literature. It presents one way to look at metaphors as used in poetry, says we all use metaphorical speech, but that poets are just very good at using it. There is considerable detail, including a list of a hundred or so metaphors which are said to be a part of culture, language, and which are part of the way people in a certain culture think. These basic metaphors are combined and used often without us being aware we use them. More Than Cool Reason gives an interesting view into how we may think, speak, and write, but I found it hard to find definitions to explain the theory. Definitions seemed to be buried in examples, so I couldn’t be sure that terms like "mapping" or "schema" or "lower-order attribute" meant the same thing or not, each time they were used. There are lots of examples, and the authors admit their interpretations of poems and passages are only one way to look at those individual texts. Maybe I’m not part of the intended audience for this book, even though I found it an interesting read.