The purpose of this course is to use contemporary metaphor theory to read ancient texts. Metaphors are no longer seen as merely a literary device but as a fundamental way that we think: "our conceptual system is largely metaphorical"
(Lakoff and Johnson, 1980). We will explore this way of understanding metaphors, which has had an impact across the humanities.
We start the semester by reading Susan Sontag's classic essays Illness and Metaphor and AIDS and Its Metaphors (1977 and 1988). From there we will go on to a broad theoretical discussion of metaphors and their functions and to detailed analysis of use of metaphorical language in text examples. In class we will be working primarily with biblical texts (based on the Hebrew or Greek texts or translations depending on your language skills), but you will be able to work with texts from you own area of specialization as well.
If metaphor is one focal point of this course, gender is another. We will focus on how gender functions in texts, i.e., gendered language. (Conceptualizing of gender and sex on a larger scale will be discussed as needed for this focus). Gendered language can both refer to "grammatical gendered language" (also called linguistic gender) or to "conceptual gendered language," language which connotes or denotes gender. Gendered metaphors belong to this second category. We will investigate whether there is a connection between grammatical gendered language and gendered metaphors, how we identify gendered metaphors in the first place, and how to best understand them. For this purpose, we will be studying gendered metaphors for God and Zion in the book of Isaiah. In this context we will also explore the relationship between metaphors and religious language and metaphors and the concept of the divine more in general.
By the end of this course, you will have gained a thorough working knowledge of current theoretical discussions of metaphor and of gender, and you will be enabled to work with metaphors in any ancient or contemporary text.