The Literary Mind.pdf

CREATIVE BLENDS 59
reinforced by the narrator of The Thousand and One Nights, who, before the vizier
tells the tale of the ox and the donkey, classifies Shahriyar's behavior as quirky
and unstable.
Because the inevitable background necessary for the central inference does
not exist in the target, the central inference cannot arise in the target. We cannot
infer in the target that the inevitable background requires someone to suffer;
that if Shahrazad manages to get the virgins off the hook, she must suffer in their
place; or that Shahrazad is foolish for working against inevitable background.
The central inferences of the tale of the ox and the donkey cannot arise in the
target independently of projection. The vizier must construct them according to
the logic of a different frame—farm labor—and then project the inference to the
target without projecting the details of the frame that made it possible for him
to establish it.
There are additional reasons that this central inference cannot arise in the
target. The agent who outsmarts himself does so because he is blinded by pride.
But this condition does not apply to Shahrazad in the target. Quite unlike her
counterpart, the donkey, she does indeed see the risk and explicitly insists upon
taking it. The donkey is foolish for blinding himself to the risk but Shahrazad
looks at it without blinking. Again, the central inference of the tale of the ox and
the donkey is simply unavailable exclusively from the target.
But the central inference is not available from the source, either. In the source
space of farm animals, it is predictable that if one beast of burden is excused from
ploughing and milling, another will be used. A human being on the farm who
did not see this likelihood would be thought to have failed in not seeing it. But
a donkey cannot see it. Much less can a donkey scheme or foresee. In the source,
the inferences that a donkey is responsible for the ox's reprieve, that he should
have foreseen how the ox's reprieve would result in his own grievous employment,
and that he is to blame for having outwitted himself are simply unavailable.
Farm animals do not have these capacities.
Where are the central inferences constructed? They are constructed in the
blended space of animals with human characteristics. The blend includes
abstract information that is taken as applying to both source and target, such
as schematic event shape and force-dynamic structure. Additionally, specific
information from both source and target is projected into the blended space.
The scenario of ploughing and milling as inevitable background, the relation
of work animals to this background, and the classification of the ox and the
donkey as work animals come from the source space. From this information,
we can deduce that when the ox is excused, the donkey is the likely replacement.
We can deduce this only because the donkey is a donkey and a donkey
can pull a plough, which is information from the source space. But to obtain