Realizing Metaphors

Readers often have regarded with curiosity the creative life of the poet. In this passionate and authoritative new study, David Bethea illustrates the relation between the art and life of nineteenth-century poet Alexander Pushkin, the central figure in Russian thought and culture. Bethea shows how Pushkin, on the eve of his two-hundredth birthday, still speaks to our time. He indicates how we as modern readers might "realize"— that is, not only grasp cognitively, but feel, experience—the promethean metaphors central to the poet's intensely "sculpted" life. The Pushkin who emerges from Bethea's portrait is one who, long unknown to English-language readers, closely resembles the original both psychologically and artistically. Bethea begins by addressing the influential thinkers Freud, Bloom, Jakobson, and Lotman to show that their premises do not, by themselves, adequately account for Pushkin's psychology of creation or his version of the "life of the poet." He then proposes his own versatile model of reading, and goes on to sketches the tangled connections between Pushkin and his great compatriot, the eighteenth-century poet Gavrila Derzhavin. Pushkin simultaneously advanced toward and retreated from the shadow of his predecessor as he created notions of poet-in-history and inspiration new for his time and absolutely determinative for the tradition thereafter.

The now-classic Metaphors We Live By changed our understanding of metaphor and its role in language and the mind. Metaphor, the authors explain, is a fundamental mechanism of mind, one that allows us to use what we know about our physical and social experience to provide understanding of countless other subjects. Because such metaphors structure our most basic understandings of our experience, they are "metaphors we live by"—metaphors that can shape our perceptions and actions without our ever noticing them. In this updated edition of Lakoff and Johnson's influential book, the authors supply an afterword surveying how their theory of metaphor has developed within the cognitive sciences to become central to the contemporary understanding of how we think and how we express our thoughts in language.

“Clear medical explanations . . . will bring comfort to those readers and their loved ones facing a cancer diagnosis” (Publishers Weekly). A Finalist for the Lane Anderson Award for Science Writing Alanna Mitchell explores the facts and myths about cancer in this powerful book, as she recounts her family’s experiences with the disease. When her beloved brother-in-law John is diagnosed with malignant melanoma, Alanna throws herself into the latest clinical research, providing us with a clear description of what scientists know of cancer and its treatments. When John enters the world of alternative treatments, Alanna does, too, looking for the science in untested waters. She comes face to face with the misconceptions we share about cancer, which are rooted in blame and anxiety, and opens the door to new ways of looking at our most-feared illness. Beautifully written, Malignant Metaphor is a compassionate and persuasive book that has the power to change the conversation about cancer. “Mitchell’s research is rooted in science, while her writing remains grippingly personal.” ―Quill & Quire

This book explores the subject of metaphor, using the imagery of cartography to set a course. It explores the creative aspects of thinking and learning through literature, writing, and word play, drawing connections between English and other content areas. Theory and practical applications meet in the book, linking activities and resources to current classroom concerns--to multiculturalism, imagination in reading and writing, critical thinking, and expanding language experiences. The first part of the book examines the uses of metaphor in constructing meaning. The second part takes up issues related to multiple perspectives--using metaphors to experience other lives, and exploring cultures through traditions. The third part of the book is devoted to a consideration of the history and current status of the English language and focuses on using cross-cultural stories in the English classroom, offering a number of resources for teaching multicultural literature in English. The fourth part examines the sensory experience of metaphors by seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling, and touching with the imagination. Contains 14 pages of references and an index. (NKA)

Metaphors show students how to make connections between the concrete and the abstract, prior knowledge and unfamiliar concepts, and language and image. But teachers must learn how to use metaphors and analogies strategically and for specific purposes, helping students discover and deconstruct effective comparisons. Metaphors & Analogies is filled with provocative illustrations of metaphors in action and practical tips.

Arguing that psychologists and their predecessors have invariably relied on metaphors in articulation, the contributors to this volume offer a new "key" to understanding a critically important area of human knowledge by specifying the major metaphors.

According to the theoretical accounts which survive in the rhetorical handbooks of antiquity, allegory is extended metaphor, or an extended series of metaphors. This volume provides a critical discussion of ancient definitions of allegory and metaphor as merely ornamental 'tropes'. They examine metaphor and allegory from a variety of perspectives and compare theory with ancient literary practice.

This book claims that metaphors must be seen as indispensable cognitive and communicative instruments in medical science. Analysis of texts taken from recently published medical handbooks reveals what kind of metaphors are used to structure certain medical concepts and what the functions are of the metaphorical expressions in the texts. Special attention is drawn to the idea that scientific facts do not originate from passive observation of reality. Imaginative thinking and the use of metaphors are required to make the unknown accessible to us. Yet, although metaphors are often a sine qua non for the genesis of a scientific fact, they may also inhibit the development of alternative views. This is due to the fact that metaphors always highlight certain aspects of a phenomenon while other aspects remain obscured. Analysis of the metaphors used in medical texts may reveal exactly which aspects are highlighted and which remain hidden and may thus help to find alternative metaphors (and possibly therapies) when current metaphors are no longer adequate. This book should be of interest not only to linguists, translators and researchers working in the field of intercultural communication, but also to doctors and medical scientists, and those interested in the philosophy of science.

This study examines the complex relations between the figure of the ghost, the textual figure of metaphor and history, in Toni Morrison's Beloved and Gabriel García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude.