A metadramatic study of nine of Shakespeare's plays, focusing on aesthetic metaphors created by the union of the playwright, actor-character, and audience.

Seminar paper from the year 2003 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 2,0, University of Tubingen (Neuphilologie), course: Understanding Utterances, language: English, abstract: For many people it seems that the application and analysis of metaphors only belongs to the field of literary studies. There are, however, such a large number of metaphorical expressions and lexicalized, so-called “frozen metaphors” in both German and English that the importance of metaphors exceeds by far their poetic usage. For Grice, metaphors result from the flouting of the first maxim (Quality) – that of not saying what one believes to be false. Metaphorical expressions hence provoke a search for the intended speaker meaning because of the obvious discrepancy between the proposition expressed by the utterance and the “falseness” of its content. This “falseness”, however, is not always clear to see. Take, for example, the metaphor “no man is an island”. It is obviously metaphorical in both content and meaning and one could deduce a whole range of weak implicatures from it but it is in no way “literally false”. Considering that Grice labelled tropes and figures of speech (such as tautology, irony and metaphor) as cases of “maxim exploitation” , it seems reasonable to analyse a text which allows for a maximum of maxim exploitation and whose author is responsible for a large number of frozen metaphors in English: What makes Shakespeare (to name just one example) extraordinary is the way he exploited this ordinary aspect of communication so that a single line or phrase triggers the discovery of a whole array of implicatures. The centre of this paper will thus be a linguistic analysis of metaphors and implicatures in Shakespeare’s play Much Ado about Nothing.

Seminar paper from the year 2003 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 2,0, University of Tubingen (Neuphilologie), course: Understanding Utterances, 11 entries in the bibliography, language: English, abstract: For many people it seems that the application and analysis of metaphors only belongs to the field of literary studies. There are, however, such a large number of metaphorical expressions and lexicalized, so-called "frozen metaphors" in both German and English that the importance of metaphors exceeds by far their poetic usage. For Grice, metaphors result from the flouting of the first maxim (Quality) - that of not saying what one believes to be false. Metaphorical expressions hence provoke a search for the intended speaker meaning because of the obvious discrepancy between the proposition expressed by the utterance and the "falseness" of its content. This "falseness", however, is not always clear to see. Take, for example, the metaphor "no man is an island". It is obviously metaphorical in both content and meaning and one could deduce a whole range of weak implicatures from it but it is in no way "literally false". Considering that Grice labelled tropes and figures of speech (such as tautology, irony and metaphor) as cases of "maxim exploitation", it seems reasonable to analyse a text which allows for a maximum of maxim exploitation and whose author is responsible for a large number of frozen metaphors in English: What makes Shakespeare (to name just one example) extraordinary is the way he exploited this ordinary aspect of communication so that a single line or phrase triggers the discovery of a whole array of implicatures. The centre of this paper will thus be a linguistic analysis of metaphors and implicatures in Shakespeare's play Much Ado about Nothing.

First published in 1978, this book represents a study of the ways in which Shakespeare exploits the possibilities of metaphor. In a series of studies ranging from the early to the mature Shakespeare, the author concentrates on metaphor as a controlling structure — the extent to which a certain metaphoric idea informs and organises the drama. These studies turn constantly to the relations between symbol and metaphor, literal and figurative, and examine key plays such as Richard III, King John, Henry V, Romeo and Juliet, Troilus and Cressida, and Coriolanus. They also provide a key to The Tempest which is analysed in terms of power and possession — the dominant motif.

Playhouse and Cosmos systematically and comprehensively describes the function of theater and role-playing as metaphors in Shakespearean drama. The author examines this metaphor's revelatory and liberating power and concludes by affirming, with Shakespeare, the creative power of theatricality in life and in art.

1995 marks the 400th anniversary of the probable first production of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet and A Midsummer Night's Dream. Though the similarities between these two plays have long been recognized, surprisingly little has been written on what they have in common. As Mark Stavig points out, not only do these plays share a self-consciously poetic approach to drama and a common topic -- the troubles of young lovers living in a hostile familial and societal context -- but they also share a framework of Renaissance metaphor built on gender oppositions and unities. In the primarily public and rational world of late sixteenth century England, interest in the more poetic and subjective dimensions of human experience was growing. Elizabethan writers, including Shakespeare, were searching for ways to communicate what Theseus somewhat skeptically calls the forms of things unknown' -- that realm of experience that can be expressed best (or perhaps only) through the language of metaphor. While recent Shakespeare criticism has tended to oversimplify Shakespeare's handling of gender by seeing him either as a supporter or an opponent of patricarchy, Stavig finds a more complex conception of gender in Shakespeare's psychology of love and in his depiction of society, nature and the cosmos. To appreciate these patterns of metaphor, we must understand the Petrarchism and neo-Platonism that were undergoing a resurgence in the 1590s. What emerges in Stavig's exploration is neither a scientific system nor a set of beliefs, but rather a flexible structure of metaphors that provides the context for a fresh and rewarding approach to these plays.

Drawing from cognitive theories about the metaphorical nature of thought, Gillian Knoll traces the contours of three conceptual metaphors - motion, space and creativity - that shape desire in plays by John Lyly and William Shakespeare.