A Cognitive Approach Towards The Interpretation Of Metaphors In The Poetical Books Of The Bible

Large amounts of the content in the Bible are written in the style ofpoetics, in the Old Testament in particular. That the abundantmetaphorical expressions in the Poetical Books of the Bible with richimages carry manifold interpretations appeals to researchers fromdifferent fields, including theologists, literary critics, psychologists andlinguistics. However, there are not so many studies on the application ofcognitive sciences into religious literary texts, particularly in religiouspoetic metaphors.The thesis then aims to apply various cognitive theories to themetaphors in religious literary works, in which the two Poetical Books ofthe Bible—the Book of Psalms and the Book of Proverbs—are chosen. Tobe more specific, the thesis tries to use a dynamic and open-endedcognitive approach to interpret the metaphors in the Biblical Poetics.Since both books are imbued with abundant metaphoricallanguages that create a new reality through cognitive process. Themain question that this thesis addresses is whether the cognitiveapproach could yield a rich multi-leveled interpretation of themetaphors involved and how human minds operate in interpreting suchmetaphors.Through a careful verse-by-verse analysis of some renownedpoetics in the two books, the thesis finds:1) two major parables arefound in the two books that intend to convey new meanings to God’speople through the existing world knowledge. In this case, applying acognitive approach—Lakoff-Turner-Fauconnier model enhanced by anewly proposed comprehensive framework of cognitive poetics provesto be a convincing and powerful theoretical instrument in interpretingthe abundant image-schemas of the metaphorical representations inquestion.2) Both two parables are essential to the interpretation of other metaphors in the Poetical books and the Bible as a whole, namelythe intertexuality of the parable.3) The thesis uses the cognitiveinstrument—the conceptual mapping and the conceptual blending togive a cognitive operational schema at the end of Chapter4andChapter5to account for the abundant images involved in themetaphors of certain poetics in both books.