The Rule of Metaphor The Creation of Meaning in Language

Paul Ricoeur is widely regarded as one of the most distinguished philosophers of our time. In The Rule of Metaphor this intellectual giant of our age seeks 'to show how language can extend itself to its very limits, forever discovering new resonances within itself'.

Recognizing the fundamental power of language in constructing the world we perceive, Ricoeur reveals the processes by which linguistic imagination creates and recreates meaning through metaphor. Taking further his acclaimed analysis of the power of myth and symbol, Ricoeur invites us to explore the many layers of language in order to rediscover what that meaning might be. A fruitful and insightful study of how language affects how we understand the world, this book is also an indispensable work for all those seeking to retrieve some kind of meaning in uncertain times.

Contents:
Translator's introduction Introduction Study 1/Between Rhetoric and Poetics: Aristotle 1. Rhetoric and Poetics 2. The intersection of the Poetics and the Rhetorics: 'Epiphora of the name' 3. An enigma: metaphor and simile (eikôn) 4. The place of exis in rhetoric 5. The place of lexis in poetics Study 2/The decline of rhetoric: Tropology 1. The rhetorical 'model' of tropology Fontainer: the primacy of idea and of word 3. Trope and figure 4. Metonymy, synecdoche, metaphor 5. The family of metaphor 6. Forced metaphor and newly invented metaphor
Study 3/Metaphor and the semantics of Discourse 1. The debate between semantics and semiotics 2. Semantics and rhetoric of metaphor 3. Logical grammar and semantics 4. Literary criticism and semantics Study 4/Metaphor and the Semantics of the word 1. Monism of the sign and primacy of the word 2. Logic and linguistics of denomination 3. Metaphor as 'change of meaning' 4. Metaphor and the Saussurean postulates 5. Between sentence and word: the interplay of meaning Study 5/Metaphor and the new rhetoric 1. Deviation and rhetoric degree zone 2. The space of the figure 3. Deviation and reduction of deviation 4. The functioning of figures: 'semic' analysis Study 6/The work of resemblance 1. Substitution and resemblance 2. The 'iconic' moment of metaphor 3. The case against resemblance 5. Psycholinguistics of metaphor 6. Icon and image Study 7/Metaphor and reference 1. The postulates of reference 2. The case against reference 3. A generalized theory of denotation 4. Model and metaphor 5. Towards the concept of 'metaphorical truth' Study 8/Metaphor and Philosophical Discourse 1. Metaphor and the equivocalness of being: Aristotle 2. Metaphor and analogia entis: onto-theology 3. Meta-phor and meta-physics 4. The intersection of spheres of discourse 5. Ontological clarification of the postulate reference Appendix Notes Works cited Index of authors