The Life of Metaphor

Author: Zhang Pei
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-07-01
Features: The Life of Metaphor attempts to open up new perspectives, approaches, and research fields for contemporary metaphor studies. First, the book provides as comprehensively as possible representative research materials on metaphor from both China and the West, and on this basis, it explores local traditional resources. Second, the book defines the historical periods, fields, and types of metaphor studies. Third, taking the conflict and reconciliation of "beauty" and "truth" as the central axis and following the principle of the synchronization of history and spirit, it integrates metaphor research achievements from both China and the West. From four dimensions—rhetoric, poetics, linguistic philosophy, and epistemology-ontology philosophy—it preliminarily establishes an interactive metaphor theory system. Fourth, it conducts a comprehensive examination of the transformative and generative nature of metaphor, thereby proving that metaphor is an organic existence that is constantly transforming and generating, and that human language, literature, cognition, and even life itself possess metaphorical characteristics of transformation and generation.