Publications
Publication details [#5015]
Gibbs, Raymond W., Jr. and Erika Boers. 2005. Metaphoric processing of allegorical poetry. In Maalej, Zouhair. Metaphor, Cognition and Culture: Selected Papers from the Fourth International Conference on Researching and Applying Metaphor (RAAM IV). Manouba-Tunis, Tunisia. pp. 11–24. 14 pp.
Publication type
Article in book
Publication language
English
Keywords
allegorical metaphor | allegorical understanding of poem | allegory | cognition and metaphor | cognitive semantics | conceptual metaphor theory | LIFE IS A JOURNEY | Maxime Kumin | metaphor comprehension | metaphorical processing | metaphorical understanding of poem | processing of metaphor | psychology | Robert Frost
Place, Publisher
Manouba-Tunis, Tunisia
Abstract
Gibbs and Boers emphasize the role of "metaphoric processing" in children's tales and literature in general as a favored strategy of understanding. This important distinction between "metaphoric processing" and "processing metaphor" is made in Gibbs (1999: 40). In an experiment they conducted, Gibbs and Boers showed how their students unequally leaned toward adopting a metaphoric (or allegoric) understanding of the two poems studied, the reason for this unequal response being that the Frost poem is built on the more primary conceptual metaphor, LIFE IS A JOURNEY. Gibbs and Boers rightly concluded that metaphoric processing may be a general strategy not just to read literature but to also understand life itself.
(Zouhair Maalej)