From WIKIPEDIA:
A root metaphor is the underlying association that shapes an individual's understanding of a situation. Examples would be understanding life as a dangerous journey, seeing life as a hard test, or thinking of life as a good party. A root metaphor is different from the previous types of metaphor in that it is not necessarily an explicit device in language, but a fundamental, often unconscious, assumption.
Religion provides one common source of root metaphors, since birth, marriage, death and other universal life experiences can convey a very different meaning to different people, based on their level or type of religious conditioning or otherwise. For example, some religions see life as a single arrow pointing toward a future endpoint. Others see it as part of an endlessly repeating cycle. In his book World Hypotheses, the philosopher Stephen Pepper coined the term and proposed a theory of four ultimate root metaphors--formism, mechanism, organicism, contextualism.
-----
And okay, turns out "metaphor" does not mean vehicle. But transport/transfer is pretty good:::
Etymology
Originally, metaphor was a Greek word meaning "transfer". The Greek etymology is from meta, implying "a change" and pherein meaning "to bear, or carry".
In modern Greek, the word metaphor also means transport or transfer.
*** How can we use TRANSFERS as linking devices?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
I love the etymology of metaphor. Meta-"a change"-the imagined social change that your friend talks about in his essay. Pherein-"to bear, or carry"-was it Yunte Huang who was talking about the double meaning of to "bear" at the translation conference? As both, to bear a burden, but also to bear a child. I sense a definition poem somewhere in here, connecting the etymology of metaphor with TheBus. Lots of stuff to play with. I think a defintion poem would be a good way to open the collection.
Maybe we could play with Transfers visually, i.e. do something with actual transfers as "chapter pages" between poems--making them act as literary transfers between poems?
Ryan
Maybe we could do a poem playing on "meta," the idea of change and transformation, and ask people on TheBus to write a poem that begins
On TheBus, I "meta"...
Even the idea of "change" and paying to get on the bus with change.
yes, the visual/physical was what i was talking about in reference to "TRANSFERS."
The "change" is a great idea. But asking people to "meta" might be too obscure. I imagine getting a lot of "metamorphosis." Maybe it'll work...maybe it'll be instructional.
Post a Comment