A metaphor is a meaty rib you can’t stop eating.
Jul 13, 2015
Jacques Lacan
le non du père (the no of the father)
le nom du père (the name of the father)
What happens when we don’t know the true “nature” of our father: (Father= person, laws,
mores, systems etc…)
Aristotle’s view of a word or idea deals with
schema or classification
•Boy•Man•Teacher•Professor
Every word has a denotative (dictionary) and connotative (associative) role. When we describe one thing in terms of another we create a metaphor.
Metaphor is the application to one thing of the name belonging to another. We may apply (a) the name of a genus to one of its species, or (b) the name of one species to its genus, or (c) the name of one species to another of the same genus, or (d) the transfer may be based on a proportion
Aristotle- Poetics (335 B.C.)
Metaphor is a strategy in which a word or expression is shifted from its normal uses to a context where it evokes new meaning.
Context
An artist must be aware of his audience otherwise a metaphor may
go unnoticed or misunderstood
Tone: a metaphor can be funny, insightful, objective, or serious.
Like Benson on The Regular Show, Mr.
Herzfeld is a manager.
well he’s more than that, but for this experiment let’s focus on one
aspect of his job
Purpose: there are different purposes
for metaphors:
Pragmatic-memeticAesthetic-vivid/interesting
Cognitive-different/delayedRhetorical-persuasive
Pragmatic: conveying meanings concisely
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At FVHS Mr. Herzfeld is Benson: The Boss and adult figure in Regular Show
Aesthetic: making expressions more vivid or interesting
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Often at FVHS Mr. Herzfeld is Batman trying to defuse a bomb.
Cognitive: providing words to describe things that
have no literal name or rendering complex
abstractions easy to understand through concrete analogies.
OR creating new meanings, forestalling
meaning or forcing meaning to be seen in the context of the whole piece of artwork.
Since seniors graduate and are replaced every year by thirteen and fourteen year old freshmen, Mr. Herzfeld’s job to turn kids intowell intentioned adults is truly Sisyphean.
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Theoretical Critic Forest Thompson: “the worst disservice a critic can do to poetry is to understand it too soon.”
Theoretical Critic Shklovsky says “the purpose of new metaphors is not to create meaning, but to renew perception by “defamiliarizing” the world.
Cleanth Brooks- The essential structure of a poem is resembles that of architecture or painting: it is a pattern of resolved stresses. from “The Heresy of Paraphrase.”
I am the Walrus- The BeatlesI am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together.See how they run like pigs from a gun, see how they fly.I'm crying.
Sitting on a cornflake, waiting for the van to come.Corporation T-shirt, stupid bloody Tuesday.Man, you been a naughty boy, you let your face grow long.I am the eggman, they are the eggmen.I am the walrus, goo goo g'joob.
Kneeling at the Pipes
Princely cockroach, inheritor,I used to stain the kitchen wall with your brothers,flood you right down the basin.I squashed you underfoot, making faces.I repent.I am relieved to hear somebodywill survive our noises.Thoughtlessly I judged you dirtywhile dropping poisons and freeways and bombson the melted landscape.I want to bribe youto memorize certain poems.My generation too craves posterity.Accept this dish of well aged meat.In the warrens of our rotting cititeswhere those small eggsround as earth wait,spread the Word.
Marge Piercy
Metaphors can be rhetoricalin nature- they can persuade,
they can move an audience to thinkin a new or particular way.
Persuasive Metaphor: A gumball machine doesn’t work until you put a coin in it. Like Benson, Mr. Herzfeld’s kind heart is what drives his every action.
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The world of politics is
filled with persuasive metaphor. Let’s get familiar with some background/context first…
2008 Presidential Race: Obama
• Young
• Intellectual
• Inexperienced
• Cultured
• Sophisticated
• Articulate
P. Candidate John McCain
• Maverick
• Too Old
• Out of Touch
• Independent
• Brave
• Experienced
• Surprising
VP Candidate Sarah Palin
• Inexperienced
• Different
• Sassy
• Non-intellectual
• Out of her league
• Motherly
• Independent
• Fighter