Lecture 1

The Cognitive Metaphor

 Basically, cognitive metaphor means that in analyzing literature or when you analyze the work of art,
you don’t use critical principles only, you might refer to other sciences or other disciplines to help
you understand the work of art.
 When we study linguistics or pragmatics, the idea is you refer to linguistics, to linguistic rules, to
pragmatic rules and other rules to help you better understand the work of art.
 In cognitive metaphor, you have to have some kind of other understandings of the work. When you
start the work, it show you how accounting, for example, helps us understand or shed more light on
the work of art, King Lear.
King Lear by William Shakespeare
King Lear basically is about him (the king) asking his three daughters how much they love him and
according to their answers, he is going to bestow‫ يمنح‬on them the fortune of his kingdom and his reason
for dividing the kingdom is that he wants to give responsibility or more responsibilities to his young
daughters. So, he would say, “Just tell me how much you love me and I would give you as much”. So much
and how much, and things like that is a number and numbers are accounted for by the accounting
principles. So, those writers who analyze the work would say “How accounting helps us all through the
play?”, “How it helps us understand the work of art as it is” .
 We will have several aspects of this cognitive metaphor theory with basic reference to King Lear
and other works.
 Some kind of criticism will tell you that you don’t have to know more about the writer, his
background, his biography to be able to understand the work. So, what you need to know is to look at
the text first and see what does it mean.
 Several writers or critics would say, “what does the poem say?” and the answer is the poem
says what is says. ‫يعني ايه الكالم ده؟‬
 You look at the structure of work of art, the given text and you analyze it, you give a
paraphrase, you know first what it means and then you look for the dominant metaphor and this
can give you the structure of the work. Knowing the structure of the work of art, you can understand
the work.
‫كل حاجة بندرسها داخلة معانا في المنهج‬
The Tempest by William Shakespeare
Prospero is a good king who is governing his country, but he was not really interested in governing
the country, he is a philosopher, reader, thinker. So, he left everything to his brother, left the
governing of the country to his brother. His brother is a wicked one like the wicked brother in As you
like it he took advantage of his brother who was not free to handle the affairs of the country and he put
him on a ship so the ship may drown (sink). The ship was saved through the work of good people who were
associates of Prospero. He managed to live in an island and then through Prospero’s books, he could get
magic. With magic, he could control other beings. On the ship was the son of his brother, Ferdinand, a
good boy. Living on the island by himself, he has his own daughter with him. Somehow Prospero wanted
this young man to fall in love with his daughter so that they could create a family, and he managed to do
that. He gave this boy a hard time so that he could see how much his daughter would love him and
sympathize with him.
‫ الخاصة بالمسرحية‬Plot‫ الزم تقرأوا الـ‬:‫ محسن‬.‫د‬
...‫وبتنتهي المحاضرة االولي هنا‬

1 Mr. Hani 4th Year Text Analysis W.A.V.E TEAM 01061932878 2023