Metaphor and Rational Discourse

Edited by Bernhard Debatin, Timothy R. Jackson, and Daniel Steuer

This volume collates papers from an interdisciplinary conference held in 1995 at Trinity College, Dublin. While the contributions from historians, philosophers and literary scholars reflect their different disciplinary backgrounds, they are alike in dealing with the essential role metaphor plays in textxs and discourses ranging from plato through the middle ages to virtual reality.

Theoretical issues are addressed, mostly in context with concrete examples. Most of the papers critically evaluate metaphors as part of rational thought rather than the enemy of reason, and some also interrogate dubious uses of metaphor. The volume reflects the openness of the debate at the conference and the shared belief in the need for textual evidence.

Contents:

• Preface ........... V
• Bernhard Debatin, Timothy R. Jackson, Daniel Steuer: Introduction ........... 1
• Christoph Lepschy: Bernhard reads Kleist ­ I: a marionette theatre as a writing machine ........... 13
• Lukas Trabert: Metaphor, rational discourse, and the beginning of philosophy in Plato's Theaetetus ........... 25
• Jürgen Barkhoff: Metaphors of the environment and the environment of metaphor in Johann Gottfried Herder's Ideen ........... 39
• David J. Denby: The rational and normative content of metaphors of interiority ........... 51
• Jeanne Riou: 'Imaginative Telepathies'. The re-writing of sensual experience in the age of virtual reality ........... 63
• Daniel Steuer: Following telepathy along riverbeds and maelstroms: Freud, Wittgenstein and Benjamin on language and communication ........... 77
• Hans Julius Schneider: Metaphorically created objects: 'real' or 'only linguistic'? ........... 91
• Bernd Naumann: Language and earth: the use of metaphor in geology and linguistics ........... 101
• Timothy R. Jackson: Erotic imagery in medieval spiritual poetry and the hermeneutics of metaphor ........... 113
• Caroline Welsh: Metaphors, method and entropy in Thomas Pynchon ........... 125
• James Edwin Mahon: Truth and metaphor: a defence of Shelley ........... 137
• Bernhard Debatin: Metaphorical iconoclasm and the reflective power of metaphor ........... 147
• James Livesey: Metaphor and writing history: a formalist account of historical knowledge ........... 159
• Ann Rigney: Muddying the waters: metaphor in history ........... 169
• Rebecca L. Spang: 'The fairy circle of words': the many games of Fernand Braudel ........... 179
• Gilbert J. Carr: Houston Stewart Chamberlain's 'Foundations' and other constructions of the turn of the century ........... 189
• Allen M. Bass: The metaphor of the human body in the political theory of John of Salisbury: context and innovation ........... 201
• Siobhán Donovan: Metaphor as an instrument of religious discourse and critique of pure reason in the works of Matthias Claudius ........... 215
• Andreas Musolff: International metaphors: bridges or walls in international communication? ........... 229
• Günter Blamberger: Kafka's death images ........... 239
• Christoph Lepschy: Bernhard reads Kleist ­ II: a text as murderer ........... 251
• Oscar Wilde: Amor intellectualis ........... 259
• Notes on the Contributors ........... 261