Figures of a Changing World: Metaphor and the Emergence of Modern Culture - Couverture souple

Berger, Harry

Couverture souple

ISBN 10 : 0823257487 ISBN 13 : 9780823257485

Editeur : Fordham University Press, 2015

Synopsis

Figures of a Changing World offers a dramatic new account of cultural change, an account based on the distinction between two familiar rhetorical figures, metonymy and metaphor. The book treats metonymy as the basic organizing trope of traditional culture and metaphor as the basic organizing trope of modern culture. On the one hand, metonymies present themselves as analogies that articulate or reaffirm preexisting states of affairs. They are guarantors of facticity, a term that can be translated or defined as fact-like-ness. On the other hand, metaphors challenge the similarity they claim to establish, in order to feature departures from preexisting states of affairs.

On the basis of this distinction, the author argues that metaphor and metonymy can be used as instruments both for the large-scale interpretation of tensions in cultural change and for the micro-interpretation of tensions within particular texts. In addressing the functioning of the two terms, the author draws upon and critiques the work of Friedrich Nietzsche, Roman Jakobson, Christian Metz, Paul Ricoeur, Umberto Eco, Edmund Leach, and Paul de Man.

A propos du livre

À propos de l'auteur

Harry Berger, Jr., was Professor Emeritus of Literature and Art History at the University of California, Santa Cruz. His most recent books are Resisting Allegory: Interpretive Delirium in Spenser's 'Faerie Queene'; Harrying: Skills of Offense in Shakespeare's Henriad; and The Perils of Uglytown: Studies in Structural Misanthropology from Plato to Rembrandt.

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: Fordham University Press
• Date d'édition: 2015
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 0823257487
• ISBN 13: 9780823257485
• Reliure: Broché
• Nombre de pages: 176
• Coordonnées du fabricant: non disponible
• Personne responsable: non disponible