More than Cool Reason: A Field Guide to Poetic Metaphor

By Mark Turner and George Lakoff

Book Overview

A classic account of how metaphor works in literature--and what we can draw from that for everyday life--from two of the leading scholars of language

We usually think of the language of poetry, the metaphors that poets use to express their intentions, as far removed from ordinary life. But in More than Cool Reason, George Lakoff and Mark Turner show how understanding how metaphor works in poetry, the tasks it takes on and the ways it shapes our patterns of thought, can be hugely helpful to seeing and understanding how we think in all manner of other fields and areas of life. Metaphor, they show, is a tool so familiar, so everyday, that we fail to notice it. Lakoff and Turner correct that failure here, helping us see how richly metaphorical our language and thought are, and what that means for not only reading and enjoying poetry and literature, but also for linguistics, philosophy, psychology, anthropology, cognitive science, and more.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0226468127
• ISBN13: 9780226468129
• Release Date: January 1989
• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Length: 237 Pages
• Weight: 0.69 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.5" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

The "Aha!" Factor

Reading "More Than Cool Reason" will be a breath of fresh air to anyone who has not yet encountered the "Lakoff-Johnson-Turner" bibliography on metaphor human thought. I found this more helpful than "Metaphors We Live By" (Lakoff & Johnson), since it deals with specific texts (e.g., "Because I could not stop for Death", "Sonnet 73" (Shakespeare), "By the Light of the Jasmine Moon"), which anchors their discussion, which might otherwise veer into the rather abstract.Reading this book changed my thinking about metaphor, and has drastically affected--for the better--my teaching on metaphor in my courses on poetry. Students have also found it extremely helpful. There is some rather tiresome repetition, but much of the authors' reiteration of points is necessary to understanding what they are saying. The indices are very helpful, although I found it necessary to extend their topical index with my own "speed index".

five for the idea, three for its handling

The important claim this book makes is that literary language does not differ from common everyday language. Poets make use of the same linguistic resources and cognitive mechanisms we all use in everyday situations. They just do it better, in innovative ways. The discussion of poems the authors provide to support their argument should perhaps be more articulate and systematic in order to be truly persuasive. At times one gets the impression that this book was conceived as a kind of divertissement in wait of future, more carefully planned incursions on the subject. However, this does not diminish the importance of a book which urges literary critics and all those who like books to consider the cognitive basis of both everyday and literary communication. Also, More than Cool Reason can be read as an accessible introduction to Lakoff and Turner (and Johnson)'s theory of conceptual metaphor. For a much more articulate discussion, I would recommend Lakoff and Johnson's "Philosophy in the Flesh", but then you will have to draw the implications of their theories for literature by yourself.