The Literary Mind.pdf

28 THE LITERARY MIND
In everyday conception, we often project a spatial action-story onto a spatial
event-story. We might say, for example, that a duplicating machine chewed
up a document. The target story is a physical and spatial event without an actor:
A document is damaged in a copying machine. The source story is a physical
and spatial action with an actor: The actor chews food. We understand the
target event-story of damage by projection from the source action-story of eating.
Chewing in the source story is projected onto the mechanical process of copying
in the target story; food is projected onto the document; chewer is projected
onto the copying machine. An action-story of eating is thus projected parabolically
onto an event-story of damage.
We can say of a sailor exposed to the elements at sea that the sun tortured
him and that he was beaten mercilessly by savage winds. The story of an actor who
tortures someone by burning him is projected onto the story of the sailor's
becoming sunburned. The story of a savage actor's mercilessly beating a victim
is projected parabolically onto the story of forcible gusts of wind impinging on
the sailor.
Many everyday event-stories lack causal actors. EVENTS ARE ACTIONS can turn
them into action-stories: We complete the event-story to include a causal actor
by projecting the actor in the action-story onto a nonactor in the event-story.
The nonactor becomes thereby a metaphorical actor, usually a person. The duplicating
machine becomes a chewer. The sun becomes a torturer. The wind becomes
a savage and merciless beater.
Not just any element of the event-story can receive projection from the actor
in the action-story. Not just any action-story can be projected in just any way
to cover just any event-story. There are constraints on parable. Not surprisingly,
these constraints depend on the image schemas we use to structure the eventstory
and the action-story.
THE IMAGE-SCHEMATIC STRUCTURE OF EVENTS
We appear to understand an event as having its own "internal" structure: It can
be punctual or drawn out; single or repeating; closed or open; preserving, creating,
or destroying entities; cyclic or not cyclic, and so on. This internal structure
is image-schematic: it is rooted in our understanding of small spatial stories.
Technically, this internal structure of an event is called its "aspect." I will refer to
it loosely as its "event shape." We think of a season as coming around again, time
as progressing along a line, a search as going on, a sale as closed, a blink as punctual
(like a spatial point). None of these events has the literal spatial or bodily
form we associate with it, but we use these image schemas to structure and recognize
these events.