Metaphorical Reading Research Articles

Shipwreck, Spectatorship and Self: A Metaphorical Reading of Memorial Architecture

German philosopher Hans Blumenberg’s Shipwreck with Spectator: Paradigm of a Metaphor for Existence (1979) investigates how cultures rationalize their relationship to the life-world through metaphorical condensations, for which the nautical journey is a recurrent trope. Blumenberg suggests that the contraposition of shipwrecks and spectators, through its juxtaposition of peril and safety, is the primary frame of reference for the metaphorics of existence. This paper considers the thematic parallels between this seafaring-as-existence framework and memorial architecture which attempts to anchor a moment in time and space against transient beliefs and memories. It does so by looking at four separate movements which drift from universal through communal to personal, and through four corresponding built designs by Edwin Lutyens, Carlo Scarpa, Maya Lin, and Michael Arad and Peter Walker. It concludes that there is a strong resemblance between the shifts in existence-philosophy and memorial architecture.

In and Out of the Text: Polish 1920s Avant-garde Poetics of Pleasure

“We are related to enjoyment as something which intimately belongs to us, to our corporal existence and inner vitality, yet is separated from and independent from us, and thus can be surprising, bewildering, burdensome, disgusting, overwhelming, terrifying, thrilling, conflicted, uncanny, uncontrollable (and sometimes even pleasurable)” – claims Aaron Schuster (2016: 44). According to the theorist, enjoyment can manifest as its opposite, especially in the context of its representations in literature. In this essay, I would like to look at avant-garde erotic poems from the interwar period that address the fascinating entanglement of the bodily and the textual. The metaphors of reading and writing, lyrical dialogue between some of the poems, metatextual reflections on the nature of erotic poetry, and the problem of embodiment are some of the strategies that Bruno Jasieński (Moja nieśmiertelność [My Immortality], Słowo o słowie [A Word about a Word], Na bis [An Encore]), Tadeusz Peiper (Naga [Naked], Ja, Ty [Me, You]), and Mila Elin (Książka [The Book], Głód [Hunger]) use to discuss the joys and challenges of trying to represent jouissance in the text. The starting point for my reflection is Alenka Zupančič’s diagnosis of a similar type of satisfaction coming from sex and talking about sex and her insights on the procedures of intellectualizing sexuality.

Una nota su metafora e ontologia in Paul Ricœur

In the last three studies of The rule of metaphor, Ricœur directly develops a referential model for the metaphorical enunciation. Thus, in this contribution, I would like to focus on the ideas that leads Ricœur to speak of a notion of «metaphorical truth», certainly retracing some well-known places on his page (par. I), but also highlighting a point that has not always been adequately emphasised – the reading of metaphors in “configurative” terms (par. II). This last point will serve, in conclusion and as a future avenue of enquiry, to make a small but necessary remark to the ontological development of the ricœurian model of metaphor: the idea that the author is suggesting not only the existence of a reprise at the conceptual level of the creative dynamism proper to metaphorical enunciation, but also the specific determination of this dynamism – its proper “quid” (par. III).

Beyond Representationalism: The Performative Materialities and Affective Dimension of Lin Tianmiao’s the Proliferation of Thread Winding

This paper reexamines the meanings and values of Lin Tianmiao’s (born 1961) The Proliferation of Thread Winding (1995) through an analysis of its materialities. Lin’s Thread Winding has received much attention in feminist discourse, which tends to draw attention to the symbolic manifestations embedded in the act of winding, and in textiles and domestic objects—techniques and materials often associated with “women’s work” within certain Western feminist critiques of women’s art. This paper moves beyond the gendered lens of interpreting Lin’s art, which has built on symbolic and metaphorical readings of the underlying visual representations, and instead turn to investigate how her work can be understood from the perspective of its discursive materialities, through which the art objects produce material signs (phenomenological effects) that indicate its previous process of art making. Drawing upon new materialist theories and the notion of affect, this paper understands the materialities of Lin’s work as dynamic phenomena, emerging from ongoing intertwining relationships between human and nonhuman agencies. It examines how Lin’s work constitutes a series of inquisitive investigations into multiple processes of making, and how affective qualities and critical knowledge can materialize in and through this process.

From conceptual to literary metaphors

Abstract It is generally agreed that literary metaphors are produced and interpreted by using the same strategies as more conventional, ordinary metaphorical expressions (George Lakoff & Mark Turner 1989; Zoltán Kövecses 2010). However, the aesthetic experience of reading metaphors in literature is a complex phenomenon that remains only partially explained. This paper aims at contributing to the study of the cognitive mechanisms that allow the aesthetic experience when reading poetic metaphors. For this purpose, after a short review of previous research on literary metaphors in the Cognitive Linguistic framework, the main tenets of Neuroaesthetics (Semir Zeki 2001; Vilayanur Ramachandran 2003), an emerging empirical discipline, are presented as referred to the study of visual art. Then, the insights from both fields are compared and applied to the study of metaphors. Results show significant coincidences as empirical research in neuroscience seem to confirm the theories and hypotheses posed by cognitive linguists, as for the way in which the emotional response to poetic metaphors is elicited.

İbn ‘Acîbe’nin Kur’ân Tefsirinde Kozmik Öznellik

In his autobiography the Moroccan Sufi Aḥmad Ibn ‘Ajība cites an incident in which his saintly grandmother gives a command to a snake and the reptile fulfils the lady’s order. Undoubtedly, the story demonstrates the special powers granted to the saintly woman, but is the snake she interacts with also special? Or do natural entities in general understand and know more than we ordinarily think? Whereas the Qur’ān repeatedly emphasises the “animated quality of nature,” portraying the conscious, knowing and even wise cosmos, the works of exegesis often interpret such verses metaphorically (majāz) as eloquent expressions of God’s power and universal submission to it. How to reconcile this widespread figurative understanding with the numerous Sufi accounts of the alive, knowing, and understanding cosmos (similar to the incident mentioned by Ibn ‘Ajība)? To answer this question and more broadly, to reflect upon the understudied issue of cosmic subjectivity in the Sufi works of tafsīr, this article looks into Ibn ‘Ajība’s Qur’ānic commentary al-Baḥr al-Madīd (The Immense Ocean), which masterfully blends exoteric and esoteric approaches to the scripture and which is aimed at general public (rather than the initiates on the Sufi path). Whereas the Sufi master himself clearly perceives everything in creation as an understanding subject, he also succeeds in seamlessly bringing together various interpretations (including purely metaphorical readings), recognising their validity and suitability for different audiences. The highest level, however, is to realise that the literal meaning of the Qur’ānic description of the cosmos accurately captures the aspects of reality hidden from senses: the spiritually enlightened actually “see” with the eye of baṣīra that the cosmos is alive, conscious, and knowledgeable, and that everything in it is ultimately a vessel manifesting Divine names.

Early Birds Can Fly: Awakening the Literal Meaning of Conventional Metaphors Further Downstream

ABSTRACT Conventional metaphors such as early bird are interpreted rather fast and efficiently. This is so because they might be stored as lexicalized, non-compositional expressions. In a previous study, employing a maze task, we showed that, after reading metaphors (John is an early bird so he can …), participants took longer and were less accurate in selecting the appropriate word (attend) when it was paired with a literally-related distractor (fly) rather than an unrelated one (cry). This suggests that the literal meaning of conventional metaphors is awakened or made available immediately after their metaphorical interpretation. But does the literal meaning remain available further downstream during sentence comprehension? In two experiments also employing a maze task, we examined whether the awakening effect can be obtained when there is a medium (6 to 8 words) and a large (11 to 13 words) distance between the metaphor and lexical choice. Results indicated that the metaphor awakening effect persists but decreases as word distance increases. An analysis of our data based on a GPT model showed that our maze effects could not be attributed to target predictability. Overall, our results suggest that the literal meaning of a metaphor is accessed and remains available for about three seconds, fading as the sentence unfolds over time. The results support a model of metaphor comprehension that postulates the availability of both literal and metaphoric content in the course of sentence processing.

Gender of Purple Manuscripts and the Makeup of Sacred Scriptures

In his letters to Roman aristocratic women about the proper use of scripture, Jerome dismissed purple makeup and any adornment of books with luxurious materials as wasteful distraction from the content of the text. He contrasts makeup and precious clothing with the textual correctness of his scholarly emended manuscripts and with corporal mortification and ascetic practices. Jerome’s dismissal of the materiality and sensuality of books goes hand in hand with a binary gender model that associates the philological work upon the text and the renunciation of its adornment with male scholarship. In order for women to become equal to men through the study of scripture, Jerome extols the performance of a textual asceticism that suppresses the makeup of books and of female bodies alike. His makeup criticism is part of a larger discourse that expresses a persistent fear of a sensual engagement with the materiality of scripture in binary gender stereotypes. A close reading of the purple metaphors employed by Jerome reveals their roots in the rhetorical appraisal of eloquence and poetic language precisely through the materiality of the text.

Strange Forms

Strange Forms

Coca-Cola in process of materialisation: a new materialist perspective on He Xiangyu’s Cola Project

This paper adopts a new materialist lens to analyze how He Xiangyu's Cola Project (2008–2012) enacts its discursive materialities. It focuses on one of the installation pieces A Barrel of Dregs of Coca-Cola (2009), which features an earthy, bitumen-like black crystalline residue, created by the artist and a number of workers by boiling down thousands of liters of Coca-Cola for a year. Existing studies primarily examine the work through symbolic and metaphorical readings that interpret the work as a critique of Western culture and consumerism's influence on China, and regard the artist as the sole protagonist of the production and meaning-making of the piece. This study focuses on the underexplored power of collective labor engagements with materials; on the materialities of the artwork; and on the artwork's potential to evoke broader critical responses. Building upon new materialist, including of Karen Barad and Amelia Jones, this paper understands the materialities of He's work in terms of material-discursive phenomena that are formed through continuous entanglements between the artist, workers, and the Coca-Cola substance. By examining the labor-intensive process manifested in the artwork's traces or marks, this study highlights how discursive materialities enacted during production processes can generate new spaces for meaning.

Black Geospatial Inquiry and Aesthetic Praxis: Toward a Theory and Method

A growing and influential cohort of Black scholar–creatives are choosing to think, theorize, aesthetically practice, and articulate blackness (Black being and living) in excess of a settled Western racial logic (nonbeing) that produced it. I set forth to advance a paradigm of Black study for thinking and theorizing the intersections of Black livingness and its inherent fugitivity within and beyond chattel enslavement. By expanding on the concepts of Black compositional thought and wake work, I illuminate an assembly of metaphors and materialities, working collectively to articulate the overall, ongoing condition and circumstance of Black life as a predictable and constitutive aspect of existing in the shadows of antiblack violence. Juxtaposing Torkwase Dyson’s aesthetic practice in concert with Christina Sharpe’s theorization of reading metaphors of Black life in diaspora (the wake, the ship, the hold, the weather), I expose how creative production and Black consciousness serve as tools for refusing “death” and offer possibilities for living.

The So-called Sempiternalism of the Early Academy

Abstract It is a well-established opinion in the literature that the immediate circle of Plato’s disciples maintained that the generation of the cosmos described in the Timaeus was to be understood as an illustrative, or educational metaphor. On this account, Plato’s students were the first to hold an eternalist, metaphorical reading of the generation of the world, challenged by the Peripatos. When criticising their position in the De Caelo, however, Aristotle describes Early Academic philosophers as holding the more nuanced view that the world is ‘indestructible and yet generated’ (ἄφθαρτον μὲν […] γενόμενον δέ). Is it possible to make any sense of this formulation and restore a different position for Early Academic philosophers? In this paper, I claim that the standard reading can be challenged and that there is ground to believe that Speusippus and Xenocrates held that the world is generated but everlasting. What they denied having happened in time and said should be understood as an illustrative metaphor is the transition from the absence of an order to order or, in other words, the cosmogonic process itself.

Diagnosis and Repair: Reading the Sick Body with Chaucer's Physician and Pardoner

Abstract: This paper theorizes fourteenth-century English metaphors of reading as a medical process, arguing that Canterbury Tales Block C showcases the interplay of the Physician's and Pardoner's two distinct medicalized hermeneutics. Turning to the queer disability politics of Eli Clare and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick to unpack the ethical import of such metaphors of reading and repair, I argue that these two tales proffer first the Physician's systematized interpretive strategy of diagnosis and cure before turning to the immoral, anti-cure processes of interpretation offered by the Pardoner. Chaucer's Physician is widely acknowledged as an inadequate reader who fails to account for nuanced spiritual meaning in both his literary and medical practice. I argue that the Physician and his tale reveal the failures of interpretation that reads for harm's "roote" and "boote" ( GP , 424–25), and, further, reveal the violence of authoritative cure applied without consent. In this paper's sick/queer lens, then, the Pardoner and his invitation to informed and consensual comfort become a response to such reading methods that seek to organize, cure, and adhere to coherent systems of meaning. Further, nuancing our current understanding of queer reparative practices in the context of chronic illness, the Pardoner's methods showcase the impossibility, at times undesirability, of interpretive repair that pursues wholeness. Refusing medical and spiritual intervention, the Pardoner comes to offer a participatory hermeneutic that prioritizes comfort over wholeness, and a model of care based not on authoritative cure but on iterative consent.

“The Ship Dieth at Sea”: Metaphor and Maritime Law

This article proposes a new methodology for engaging with early modern legal metaphor. It argues that a full account of the trope must integrate its legal-historical, cultural, literary, and philosophical dimensions. After discussing what makes early modern legal metaphor unique (and thus uniquely challenging to decipher), I consider various philosophical, legal, cognitive, and literary approaches to the rhetorical figure and demonstrate how each perspective adds additional insight to its untangling in juridical contexts. The article culminates in a reading of a single metaphor taken from lawyer John Exton's treatise “The maritime dicæologie, or, the Sea-jurisdiction of England” (1664): “The ship dieth at sea.” Ultimately, I argue that this metaphor references admiralty actions in rem, which were integral to the functioning of the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century English High Court of Admiralty, an interpretation that emerges only when accounting for the trope in both its textual and intertextual frameworks.

A bout with the law: Marco Cianfanelli’s representation of Nelson Mandela in Shadow Boxing

A sculpture that is more than five metres high and constructed from laser-cut painted steel, Marco Cianfanelli’s Shadow Boxing (2013) refers to a photograph taken by Drum photographer Bob Gosani in 1957 that shows a young Nelson Mandela sparring with Jerry Moloi, a boxing champion. Placed outside the Magistrates’ Court in Johannesburg, where a young Mandela defended his clients, Shadow Boxing is also just opposite Chancellor House, where Mandela and fellow activist Oliver Tambo had their law offices between 1952 and 1960. Functioning together with the space, Shadow Boxing invokes a sense of Mandela’s experiences in the 1950s while simultaneously encouraging insights and reflections about the ways in which apartheid histories have had impact on the present. Inviting a metaphorical reading of Mandela’s engagement with the law by being placed outside the Magistrates’ Courts as well as his own law offices, Shadow Boxing, it is suggested, also encourages associative interpretations through its formal and material properties. It is argued that, while it depicts a well-known individual on a large scale, Shadow Boxing encourages a more participative and mnemonic engagement than is usual in public statuary.

Мотив родственной вражды в фольклоре северных селькупов

Introduction. One specific feature to distinguish Selkup folktales is that the main character and his opponent are usually relatives. So, a positive character kills a relative of his (referred to as devil) and/or the latter’s relatives — daughters and mother, and all that done with particular cruelty. The devil usually kills the positive character’s parents, which is not a hindrance to the marriage of the hero to a daughter of the devil. As is known, folklore reflects a certain historical reality, stage-by-stage ideas of an ethnos about structure of society and its morality. And the question is why Selkups of the past had had such ethical norms, and how they had been explained. Goals. The study seeks to explore the motif of familial hostility in folklore of the northern Selkups, and the research objectives include identification and explanation of Selkup folklore plots where relatives act as opposing parties. Methods. The main research methods are semantic analysis (and its analogues — abstraction and reading of metaphors), integrated approach, typological and historical methods, modeling and theorizing. The theoretical basis of research logic is compiled from the concepts by K. Levi-Strauss, A. M. Zolotarev, and A. Gennep. Results. The study concludes that in the past Selkups had a dual social organization, the whole ethnos having been divided into two phratries, two exogamous halves for their members to enter into marriage unions. The war waged by folktale heroes emphasizes the division of the people into two parts and delineates the ‘abyss’ that lies between the halves of one ethnic community. In the Selkup motif of familial hostility morality goes second. The motif is to describe — through the language of metaphors — the model of standard social structure, social organization of the Selkups at a certain historical stage.

Hollywood Harmony: Musical Wonder and the Sound of Cinema

Hollywood Harmony: Musical Wonder and the Sound of Cinema

Algumas notas sobre a quantificação de adjetivos de cor por muito e pouco

The present investigation aimed to assess whether color adjectives, considering that they are qualificatives, could accept graduation and, if so, what type of scale they would be associated with. The paper begins by focusing on some of the existing literature on gradable adjectives, presenting, afterwards, some works specifically focused on color adjectives. The quantification of color adjectives was analyzed through the combination of the selected adjectives (primary colors: yellow, blue and red plus black and white) with the quantifiers muito and pouco. The results show that, in EP, the semantic investigation of this type of adjective is complex, since the readings obtained were not linear. In fact, there is, on the one hand, a typically gradable reading, which promotes a movement of the adjectives to a higher or lower point of the scale. It is possible, on the other hand, to obtain metaphorical readings, whose non-literal uses can have diverse meanings, which can either refer to physical or emotional states, skin tones, or even meanings that are very specific for EP, such as, for example, to make ayellow smile. It is thus difficult to evaluate the type of scale associated with these adjectives, since, in the case of intensity readings, there may indeed be an approximation to a representative prototype of the color, but the same does not apply to metaphorical readings

РАСПОЗНАВАНИЕ НОВЫХ МЕТАФОР В РАЗНЫХ СИНТАКСИЧЕСКИХ ПОЗИЦИЯХ В РОДНОМ И ИНОСТРАННОМ ЯЗЫКЕ: РЕЗУЛЬТАТЫ ОКУЛОГРАФИЧЕСКОГО ИССЛЕДОВАНИЯ

The study explores gaze behavior in novel metaphor recognition in L1 and L2 as affected by the syntactic position of a metaphor; therefore, we test the contrastive role of syntactic foregrounding in information processing. Following cognitive linguistic theories of foregrounding [Talmy 2000; Iriskhanova 2014], we expect its effects on both gaze behavior and metaphor recognition in subject and predicate positions. Following the theories exploring the role of cognitive mechanisms of analogical reasoning and associative fluency [Gentner & Bowdler 2008; Holyoak & Stamenković 2020] in L1 and L2 [Littlemore et al. 2011, Heredia and Cieślicka 2016], we expect differences in L1 and L2 participants in reading and recognition of novel metaphors. The results show that novel metaphor recognition in less foregrounded syntactic position is better in both L1 and L2, which might be explained by the fact that in syntactically foregrounded positions the participants were more likely to search for the source of metaphor, rather than for its target. Additionally, we revealed significant differences in L1 and L2 gaze performance in mean fixation duration, which is higher in syntactically foregrounded position for L2, which might be explained by higher effects of syntactic foregrounding in L2.

İslam ve Evrim: Bir Savunma

Arguably most crucial issue in science-religion interaction in the Muslim context is the relation of Islam and the Neo-Darwinian theory of evolution. Muslim scholars are divided into two main camps. On the one hand, Muslim scholars with more traditional inclinations think that Islam conflicts with evolution. On the other camp, we have more scientifically oriented Muslim thinkers who think that theory of evolution is fully compatible with Islam. These thinkers, primarily practicing scientists, usually either offer a metaphorical reading of some of the Qur’anic verses or reinterpret them. In this paper, I will take a middle ground and try to evaluate the compatibility of the traditional reading of Qur’an with the Neo-Darwinian theory of evolution without invoking metaphorical reading or reinterpretation. We will also accept the standard scientific narrative without any distortion. First, I will defend the claim that the scriptural creation narrative is incompatible with the theory of evolution is analogous to the problem of evil, i.e., the claim that evil is incompatible with the God of classical Theism. Using this analogy, I will argue that rather than trying to find a complete and plausible account of how the Qur’anic narrative and the theory of evolution can both be true, we should search for more modest approaches which just aim to show that two accounts are compatible—similar to defenses in the context of the problem of evil. After sketching both the scientific as well as the scriptural accounts, and after arguing that the only potential conflict lies in the common ancestry thesis, I will present two such defenses which aim to show the compatibility of the Qur’anic narrative with the theory of evolution. First, the "double creation defense" involves scenarios at which Adam is created twice, once in Paradise, which is described by scripture, and the other one on Earth described by evolutionary science. As such, both accounts can be true at the same time and therefore are compatible. Second, "the multiple ancestors defense" argues that God might have created Adam out of clay directly, with his descendants reproducing with evolved homo sapiens. As such, both creation narratives coexist without inconsistency.