English 798
Language and Metaphor
Summer 2011
Tuesday and Thursday 9:30 - 11:30
J Donaldson
CNH 308
Ext. 24132
jdonalds@mcmaster.ca
This course offers a study of metaphor. As such a study must necessarily establish some ground rules with respect to
language, linguistics, and literature; we will begin with a study of language modes, particularly via Northrop Frye’s
theory of the five modes of language in Words with Power (the descriptive, metonymic, rhetorical/ideological,
imaginative, and kerygmatic). We will then move on to a study of metaphor proper. Our treatment will touch on
a variety of related areas of interdisciplinary study, including cognitive theories of mind, the sciences of physics and
biology, evolutionary theory, grammar and linguistics, genre theory, and art and painting.
Texts
Course Pack, English 798, Summer 2011
Northrop Frye, Words with Power
Paul Ricoeur, The Rule of Metaphor
Lakoff and Johnson, Metaphors We Live By
Readings
Class 1 (May 3): A = B
Introduction
Class (May 5): Modes of Language
Northrop Frye, Words with Power, Chapters 1, 2, & 3
Class 3 (May 10): Metaphor & Symbol
Northrop Frye, “Metaphor I”
Northrop Frye, Anatomy of Criticism, on metaphor
Poem. Bishop, “In the Waiting Room”
Poem. Stevens, “The Motive for Metaphor”
Class 4 (May 12): Hermeneutics
I.A. Richards, The Philosophy of Rhetoric (Lectures V & VI)
Max Black, Selections
Philip Wheelwright, “Tensive Language,” “Two Ways of Metaphor”
Poem. Stevens, “The World as Meditation”
Class 5 (May 17): Seeing As
Paul Ricoeur, “The Rule of Metaphor” Selections
Poem. Stevens, “Anecdote of the Jar”
Class 6 (May 19): Metaphor as Transgression
Paul de Man, from On Metaphor
Jacques Derrida, “Differance”
Poems. Merrill, “Body,” “Vol. XLIV No. 3"
Class 7 (May 24): Metaphor, Catachresis, and Ethics
Nietzsche, “Truth and Lies in a Non-moral sense”
Oscar Wilde, “The Decay of Lying”
Poem, Richard Wilbur, “Mind”
Poem. Lowell, “Epilogue”
Class 8 (May 26): Royal Metaphor, Existential Metaphor, and Spirit
Northrop Frye, Great Code, Pages 56, 171
Northrop Frye, Words with Power, Chapter 4
Leah Knight, “Word, Flesh, Metaphor, and ‘Something’ of a Mystery in Words with Power.”
Jeffery Donaldson, “Spirit and its Metaphoric Environment”
Poem. Richard Outram,“Demand”
Poem. George Herbert, “Prayer”
Class 9 (May 31): Worlds Visualized
Samuel Levin, Metaphoric Worlds, Selections
Philip Wheelwright, “The Sense of Reality”
E.H. Gombrich, Art and Illusion, Selections
Poem. Dickinson, selected poems
Class 10 (June 2): Metaphors we live by
Lakoff and Johnson, Metaphors We Live By
Class 11 (June 7): Metaphor in Science
Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Selections
Jeffery Donaldson, “The Mutation of Metaphor”
Class 12 (June 9): Metaphor and Wisdom
Jan Zwicky, Wisdom and Metaphor
Daniel C. Dennett, Kinds of Minds, Consciousness Explained, Selections
Jeffery Donaldson, “The Metaphor of Consciousness”
Course Evaluation
Response Pages, 1- 2 pages (5 x 7% each)
Term paper, 15 pages
Participation
35%
50%
15%