An Application of Monroe C. Beardsley's Controverion Theory of Metaphor – On Examples of Synaesthetic Metaphor from Proust’s À la recherche du temps perdu
(2009) LIVR41 20091Master's Programme: Literature - Culture - Media
Comparative Literature
- Abstract
- This thesis is to go head to head with metaphor theory and to humbly try to wrestle from the enormous structure of facts and hypotheses that such theories form collectively, one theory that might favorably be used to study another interesting phenomenon. This phenomenon is the variety of metaphor that is encouraging of synaesthesia, called simply synaesthetic metaphor.
For the first part of this thesis general metaphor theory has been studied in an endeavor to grasp the broader strokes of what metaphor is and what it has been considered to be through history. The reading process was then, more or less automatically, honed in towards more and more specialized cases of metaphor theory and also critique of metaphor theories which... (More) - This thesis is to go head to head with metaphor theory and to humbly try to wrestle from the enormous structure of facts and hypotheses that such theories form collectively, one theory that might favorably be used to study another interesting phenomenon. This phenomenon is the variety of metaphor that is encouraging of synaesthesia, called simply synaesthetic metaphor.
For the first part of this thesis general metaphor theory has been studied in an endeavor to grasp the broader strokes of what metaphor is and what it has been considered to be through history. The reading process was then, more or less automatically, honed in towards more and more specialized cases of metaphor theory and also critique of metaphor theories which indeed have turned out to be even more educational than many of the theories themselves. As part of the purpose of this thesis is to look upon synaesthetic metaphor, one theory, after considering many, stood out as being the most suitable to do so.
For studying synaesthetic metaphor philosopher Monroe C Beardsley’s theory as he presents it in his book Aesthetics – Problems in the Philosophy of Criticism (1958) was found to be the most suitable, but to be able to apply it to examples, it had to be rigorously presented in the text. Throughout this presentation effort was made to problematize Beardsley’s concepts and ideas which indeed led to further insights on what metaphor might be.
To find examples to apply the selected theory on, or put simply to find test subjects, a literary work that is acclaimed for its richness in figural language was turned to. After reading the first two volumes of Proust’s epic In Search of Lost Time (À la recherche du temps perdu, 1913 – 1927), synaesthetic metaphors were chosen under no rule but that there should be examples from all five senses to ensure some breadth.
For the next part of the thesis the functions and mechanisms of the theory of metaphor chosen was simply tested on the synaesthetic metaphors from Proust in an attempt to explicate them.
From these explications some concluding answers to the research questions were drawn and somewhat further problematized in the finishing discussion. (Less)
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http://lup.lub.lu.se/student-papers/record/1444556
- author
- Hyltén-Cavallius, Isak LU
- supervisor
- organization
- course
- LIVR41 20091
- year
- 2009
- type
- H1 - Master's Degree (One Year)
- subject
- keywords
- Monroe C. Beardsley, Controversion Theory of Metaphor, Controversion Theory, Metaphor, Metafor, Proust, Metaphor Theory, Metaforteori, Synaesthetic Metaphor, Sinnesanalogi, Subjectivity, Subjektivitet, Connotation, Konnotation, Culture, Kultur, Explication, Explikation
- language
- English
- id
- 1444556
- date added to LUP
- 2010-02-25 11:41:30
- date last changed
- 2011-04-21 14:46:14
@misc{1444556,
abstract = {{This thesis is to go head to head with metaphor theory and to humbly try to wrestle from the enormous structure of facts and hypotheses that such theories form collectively, one theory that might favorably be used to study another interesting phenomenon. This phenomenon is the variety of metaphor that is encouraging of synaesthesia, called simply synaesthetic metaphor.
For the first part of this thesis general metaphor theory has been studied in an endeavor to grasp the broader strokes of what metaphor is and what it has been considered to be through history. The reading process was then, more or less automatically, honed in towards more and more specialized cases of metaphor theory and also critique of metaphor theories which indeed have turned out to be even more educational than many of the theories themselves. As part of the purpose of this thesis is to look upon synaesthetic metaphor, one theory, after considering many, stood out as being the most suitable to do so.
For studying synaesthetic metaphor philosopher Monroe C Beardsley’s theory as he presents it in his book Aesthetics – Problems in the Philosophy of Criticism (1958) was found to be the most suitable, but to be able to apply it to examples, it had to be rigorously presented in the text. Throughout this presentation effort was made to problematize Beardsley’s concepts and ideas which indeed led to further insights on what metaphor might be.
To find examples to apply the selected theory on, or put simply to find test subjects, a literary work that is acclaimed for its richness in figural language was turned to. After reading the first two volumes of Proust’s epic In Search of Lost Time (À la recherche du temps perdu, 1913 – 1927), synaesthetic metaphors were chosen under no rule but that there should be examples from all five senses to ensure some breadth.
For the next part of the thesis the functions and mechanisms of the theory of metaphor chosen was simply tested on the synaesthetic metaphors from Proust in an attempt to explicate them.
From these explications some concluding answers to the research questions were drawn and somewhat further problematized in the finishing discussion.}},
author = {{Hyltén-Cavallius, Isak}},
language = {{eng}},
note = {{Student Paper}},
title = {{An Application of Monroe C. Beardsley's Controverion Theory of Metaphor – On Examples of Synaesthetic Metaphor from Proust’s À la recherche du temps perdu}},
year = {{2009}},
}