Introduction
Theories of metaphors are traditionally concerned with two questions: How can one recognize a metaphor, and how can one offer a plausible explication of it. More recently, with the advent of generative linguistics, a hitherto neglected question has begun increasingly to draw attention: how can one account for the fact that human beings are capable of producing and understanding novel metaphoric constructions to which they have not been previously exposed. The present book assumes that metaphors have not only meanings and semantic and logical structures from which those meanings arise, but also perceived effects, which may have a substantial contribution to the poetic qualities of literary works. What is more, it assumes that these perceived qualities can systematically be related to meanings and structures, via the cognitive processes of a human perceiver. As a review of the contemporary critical scene may reveal, there are, on the one hand, impressionist critics who indulge in the effects of literary texts but have difficulties in relating them to their structures. On the other hand, there are analytic and structuralist critics who excel in the description of the structure of literary texts, but it is not always clear what their human significance is, or how their perceived effects can be accounted for. Cognitive Poetics, as practiced in the present work, offers cognitive theories to account for the relationship between the structure of literary texts and their perceived effects. Further, one of the main assumptions of this book is that neither the meanings, nor the perceived effects of metaphors can be satisfactorily accounted for with reference to conventions only. Reliance on conventions at best transfers the mystery from one place to another. It is essential to explain how metaphors are understood for the first time.
This book comprises roughly twenty years' work on metaphoring,
brought up-to-date with my present position. Accordingly,
one may distinguish several groups of papers in it,
reflecting my changing approaches in the course of
years. In retrospect, however, these approaches are
complementary rather than conflicting: they tend to
combine into a more or less comprehensive conception
of metaphor, considering a variety of interrelated
aspects of the phenomenon.
At the beginning of my critical career I was mainly
interested in the question what does a metaphor mean,
and how one can determine this meaning in a fairly
reliable manner. Later, in my dealings with plays and
longer poems I was influenced by Wilson Knight's studies
of the contribution of imagery to the "spiritual
space" of Shakespeare's plays. Since these works
of mine have little to contribute to the cognitive
study of figurative language, I have included neither
kind in the present book. Only in the chapter "Semantic
Information-Processing and Poetic Language" have
I included a brief section on Wilson Knight's discussion
of the mental-imagery in Julius Caesar and its contribution
to the play's "spiritual space"in order to
indicate the place of this approach within the cognitive
model expounded there.
The first group of papers in this book (chapters 1-3)
is a concise presentation of some far more extensive
study I carried out in the late 'sixties and the early
'seventies, concerning the perceptual qualities regularly
associated with certain figurative structures. These
papers assume that the witty or emotional quality of
a metaphor or simile is not determined only by the
semantic elements included, but also by its structure,
the "rhetorical manipulation" of those elements.
Far from being idiosyncratic or arbitrary, these perceived
qualities can be systematically related to certain
structures; and when several readers report different
or even conflicting qualities perceived in the same
stretch of text, one may specify in what kind of performance
a certain kind of poetic structure tends to give rise
to one or the other perceived quality. When attention
is drawn to the incompatibility of the terms, focus
is split and the metaphor is perceived as witty; when
attention is directed away from the incompatible terms
to their joint effect, the focus is integrated, and
the metaphor tends to be perceived as emotional rather
than witty. The papers consider some of the rhetorical
techniques, as well as some of the underlying cognitive
and psychodynamic mechanisms which achieve this. The
approach in these three papers is not exactly cognitive
in the sense prevalent in Cognitive Science (one of
them even takes its departure from a Freudian theory
of jokes and caricature). But they already indicate
the cognitive direction; and what is more, they suggest
a general framework of great literary interest, in
which the later cognitive work assumes its literary
significance.
The second group of papers (chapters 4-7) apply componential
analysis to poetic language in general, and figurative
language in particular. This group of papers has three
objectives. First, it has adopted from contemporary
linguistic theory a semantic information-processing
model in an attempt to account for the capability of
human beings to produce and understand figurative expressions
to which they have never before been exposed. It attempts
to do so in a way that conceives of this capability
as of a part of their general "linguistic competence",
that enables them to produce and understand pieces
of literal discourse to which they have never before
been exposed. Secondly, it uses the same information-processing
model to account for intuitions concerning the differences
among a variety of metaphors. Some metaphors are "unmarked",
some are "marked"; the former are perceived
as more "natural", the latter as more "witty",
or "modernistic". Third, such intuitions
are part of the data that a "plausible hypothesis"
must account for in any attempt to interpret a poem.
In this way one may hope to account for intuitions
that prefer one "plausible interpretation"
to another. One may offer an almost infinite range
of meanings as construals of figurative expressions
or interpretations of whole poems. This group of four
papers seeks "grounds for constraining their
basis" - to paraphrase George Miller. The hierarchic
model of meaning components or semantic features cannot
do justice to the full richness of real-life categories;
therefore there is an attempt to supplement it in three
directions: Rosch and Mervis' conception of "good
example", Collins and Quillian's model of semantic
information-processing and the LNR group's conception
of Cognitive Schemata (or Schank's Script).
The next group of papers (chapters 8-10) explores the
relationship between the concrete and the abstract
in poetry. They take their point of departure from
the observation that abstractions and abstract nouns
in poetry are typically "double-edged": in
certain contexts they are the intellectual tool for
generalizing across situations, whereas in other contexts
they are the source of particularly lowly differentiated
perceptual and emotional qualities. It is suggested
that, paradoxically enough, school-books and certain
literary schools commend concrete descriptions precisely
because in concrete nouns a considerable number of
abstractions are "grown together". In other
words, concrete nouns appear to be the most efficient
way for the cognitive coding of abstractions. In chapters
9-10 the potential sources of the lowly differentiated
perceptual and emotional qualities of abstract nouns
are explored at considerable length. By the same token,
such cognitive mechanisms are considered as perceptual
and conceptual categorization in responding to poetry,
or rapid and delayed categorization in the critics'
attempts to offer theoretical explanations.
In an attempt to account for the double-edgedness of
abstract nouns, chapter 9 explores the application
of orientation-mechanisms to poetry. In this respect,
chapter 11, "Poetry of Disorientation", exploring
certain extreme instances of mannerist (Mediaeval,
Metaphysical or Modernist) poetry supplements the discussion
in chapter 9. This chapter discusses three conspicuously
puzzling poetic devices usually associated with varieties
of the poetry of wit: a specific kind of application
of sensuous metaphors, the metaphysical conceit and
the grotesque. These devices are treated as adaptive
devices turned to aesthetic ends. It is claimed that
human beings need not learn the literary application
and effects of these devices: the aesthetic quality
of emotional disorientation is perceived whenever the
smooth functioning of adaptive and defense mechanisms
is disrupted for adaptive purposes in a physical or
social environment in which self-specifying information
is destroyed, and cannot be picked up by the perceiving
consciousness. Such an assumption can explain more
parsimoniously than the assumption of literary influence
such facts as the recurrence of certain "unlikely"
devices in poets reputed for their originality and
inventiveness, as well as the tendency of the "Poetry
of Disorientation" to become prevalent precisely
in certain kinds of socio-cultural contexts. This discussion
is reproduced in chapter 11 with minor additions from
my pamphlet What is Cognitive Poetics? (pp. 40-56);
I have already said there what I had to say on the
cognitive nature of the sensuous metaphor and the metaphysical
conceit, but the present book would have been outrageously
incomplete had I ignored these issues.
The exceptionally long chapter 12 is a group by itself,
and is devoted to Literary Synaesthesia. It carefully
distinguishes literary synaesthesia from synaesthesia
as a psychological phenomenon. The latter refers to
an "involuntary awareness of sensation, perception,
or 'image' of one sense which accompanies (perhaps
invariably) the stimulation of a different sense or
even the mental representation of that stimulation",
whereas the former refers to the metaphoric attribution
of a term derived from one sensory domain, to a term
derived from another. It is far from being obvious
that language in this sense merely reflects a psychological
reality of the association of different senses. What
is more, I argue that some of the most interesting
aspects of literary synaesthesia are related to uses
that do not refer to an actual co-presence of impressions
from different senses in extra-linguistic psychological
reality.
Finally, the Appendix "Thing-Free Qualities and
the TOT Phenomenon" has a double function. On
the one hand, it gives a more systematic overview of
two notions to which I have recourse time and again
in various chapters of this book. The notions thing-free
qualities and thing-destruction have been borrowed
from Ehrenzweig's theory of music and the visual arts
(combining Gestalt-theory with psychoanalytic theory).
The TOT Phenomenon appears to be a window into the
organization of semantic memory and the hidden workings
of the psycholinguistic mechanism underlying word-retrieval;
here I summarize at considerable length Roger Brown's
and David MacNeill's brilliant experiment in the psycholinguistic
laboratory. On the other hand, the combination of these
two notions may yield significant insight into the
aesthetic use of words, as well as into the wider aesthetic
purposes of the use of figurative language. It also
seems to re-assert the psychological reality of the
semantic-features model explored in chapters 4-7. As
a matter of fact, this chapter seems to do much more;
it seems to amount to a psycholinguistic model of poetry.
Ehrenzweig's terms relate poetry to aesthetic processes
in the other domains of art, whereas Roger Brown's
analysis of the TOT Phenomenon shows how the notion
of thing-destruction can be related to the "destruction"
of words. Moreover, the TOT-experiment did not come
up only with semantic findings, but also with some
phonetic and phonological information that seems to
be highly illuminating about the organization of the
sound-patterns of poetry.
When one considers the perceived qualities of poetry
in general and of metaphors in particular, one cannot
escape facing a rather disconcerting issue. Words designate
"compact" concepts, whereas some poetry and
some metaphors at least are said to evoke diffuse emotions
or vague moods. Furthermore, as brain-research of the
last few decades seems to suggest, language is a predominantly
sequential activity, of a conspicuously logical character,
associated with the left cerebral hemisphere; whereas
diffuse emotional processes are typically associated
with the right cerebral hemisphere. Thus, while we
can name emotions, language does not appear to be well
suited to convey their unique diffuse character. Accordingly,
emotional poetry ought to be a contradiction in terms.
We know that this is not the case. But this presentation
of the problem emphasizes that we have all too easily
accepted what ought not to be taken for granted. There
is no escape from the recognition that language is
a highly differentiated logical tool by its very nature,
and that it requires special manipulations to convey
or evoke with its help lowly differentiated, diffuse
emotional qualities. I have discussed elsewhere (e.g.
Tsur, 1978; 1983b) the over-all convergent and divergent
organizations in poetry, which result respectively
in witty and emotional poetic qualities. In the present
book I have made in several chapters only fleeting
references to this distinction. On the other hand,
many of the issues discussed in detail in the present
book propose, in fact, solutions to the problem raised
in this paragraph. Thus, for instance, the TOT-experiment
has unearthed some psycholinguistic processes that
keep the semantic and phonologic information in a diffuse
state and prevent it from "growing together"
into a compact word.
As I have said, abstract nouns are double-edged. They
may designate a highly differentiated, compact concept,
or some lowly differentiated, diffuse perceptual or
emotional quality. This distinction is explored in
chapter 9. It has been observed that abstract nouns
are perceived as typically diffuse and lowly differentiated
when they occur in the description of a concrete scene
defined here and now, by some deictic device, where
there are no concrete objects with characteristic stable
visual shape. The reason for this seems to be as follows:
Logic and language are typically associated with the
left cerebral hemisphere, whereas emotions and spatial
orientation are typically associated with the right
cerebral hemisphere. The output of the left hemisphere
is typically compact and linear, the output of the
right hemisphere is typically diffuse and global. By
evoking the mechanism of spatial orientation, the share
of the right hemisphere in information-processing is
increased. That is why poets, bards and prophets in
several cultures tend to project their feelings upon
the surrounding landscape. Chapter 10 explores another
device for rendering abstract nouns lowly differentiated,
diffuse, emotional: metaphoric constructions of the
form "immersion in abstraction". The verb
that contains [immersion] as one of its meaning components
transfers the feature <+water> to the abstraction;
whereas the abstraction cancels in <+water> the
physical elements, retaining such feelings as the undifferentiated
but intense accentuation of the whole outer surface
of the body, the removal of barriers between one's
self and not-self, heightened communication between
the parts of one's body, etc. All this involves an
heightened awareness of some lowly-differentiated sensation
related to the tactile sense. Chapter 8 discusses poetic
techniques for abstracting abstractions from concrete
descriptions, which then are treated in ways discussed
in the ensuing chapters. Chapter 12 presents one of
the most powerful means for suggesting some undifferentiated
quality: treating the more highly differentiated sense
in terms of the more lowly differentiated sense.
The application of the findings of brain research to
poetics is controversial both from the point of view
of brain-researchers and from the point of view of
the methodology of poetics. So I have decided, in the
last minute before sending this book to press, to add
a second appendix in which I defend my methodololgy.
Though aspiring to a rather many-sided view of metaphoring,
this book is far from exhaustive. It does not even
present all the cognitive approaches to metaphor, nor
even all the cognitive aspects which I have been exploring
during the past few years. Substantial parts of my
recent book How Do the Sound Patterns Know They are
Expressive? could be included here. My discussion of
sound symbolism is obviously relevant to metaphoring,
and the chapters "Some Spatial and Tactile Metaphors
for Sound" and "A Reading of Rimbaud's 'Voyelles'"
are, in fact, discussions of verbal and literary synaesthesia.
As I have said above, the ideas presented in the present book have lingered with me, and have grown for the past twenty years or so. During these years I had occasions to discuss them with many of my teachers, friends, colleagues and students: back in the late 'sixties and early 'seventies, with members of staff at the English Department of the University of Sussex, most notably with David Daiches and Laurence Lerner; more recently, with Zephyra Porat, David Gill, Yeshayahu Shen, Joseph Glicksohn, Chanita Goodblatt, Ruth Lavy and Hanna Lock. I had the privilege to have a paper of mine returned from College English for amendment by Richard Ohmann. Following his detailed and inspiring criticism I have reconsidered certain issues, expanded the paper for the present publication, and split it into two chapters (8 & 9). I am indebted to all these persons, but none of them should be blamed for the final outcome.
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