The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 16.0177  Friday, 28 January 2005

From:           Bonnie Melchior <
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Date:           Thursday, 27 Jan 2005 11:59:23 -0600
Subject: 16.0157 Shakespeare and the Invention of Metaphor and
Comment:        Re: SHK 16.0157 Shakespeare and the Invention of Metaphor and
Language

 >Tim Carroll and Douglas Galbi want us to suppose that there is
 >something
 >either personally or historically unique about the metaphoric language
 >in Shakespeare. Modern cognitive science, however, is busy
 >demonstrating
 >that making metaphors-and especially using metaphors to relate our
 >individual experience to recurrent natural and social phenomena as
 >perceived and reported by others ("links to more abstract ideas") is a
 >fundamental human mental activity. From the literary angle see
 >especially the work of Mark Turner (*The Literary Mind*, *Death is the
 >mother of Beauty*) and Gilles Fauconier (*The Way we Think*), which
 >offer good introductions. Shakespeare may have been particularly good
 >at
 >doing it; early modern Europeans put formal training in rhetoric at
 >the
 >center of their educational theory and practice. But the process
 >itself,
 >if the cognitive chaps are right, belongs to all of us.
 >
 >David Evett

I would like to add a footnote to what David Evett said in the above
post:  metaphor, in modern  linguistic studies,  has been seen as an
essential and basic feature of all  language.  It is not "decoration,"
and it is not a trope peculiar to "literature."  See  *Metaphors We Live
by*,  by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson.

Bonnie Melchior

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