Avain 4/2010

A B S T R A C T S
Cognitive Metaphor as an Analytical Tool?
The Embodied Imagery of Dylan Thomas’s “After the
Funeral” and the Challenge of Metaphoric Coherence
The article aims at drawing interpretive value from the theory of cognitive metaphor
by bringing it together with a challenging test case, Dylan Thomas’s poem “After the
funeral” (1939). Since the publication of Lakoff and Turner’s influential Metaphors
We Live By (1980), there has been a lot of discussion about the groundbreaking idea
of metaphor as a way of thinking, as well as about the problems in the model. Lakoff
and Johnson have been criticised for producing reductive readings of literary texts
and for having a limited conception of metaphor as a trope. The article claims that as
a result, the model has been overlooked as a possible tool for poetry analysis. While
acknowledging the limitations of the model, the article employs the idea of metaphoric
mapping in describing how a complex metaphor works. Furthermore, the article argues
that this mapping process can account for more than just individual expressions: the
blends formed in interpreting metaphors can influence one another and thus form a
network of metaphors. The reader accommodates deviant figurative expressions to their
knowledge of conventional metaphors but also to the context of the whole poem, thus
striving for metaphoric coherence. This process requires literary competence, which is
something the cognitive theory of metaphor does not really take into consideration.
The article then argues that certain additions and adjustments need to be made in order
to develop the theory as an analytical resource.
Anne Päivärinta
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