Against ornament: O.M. Freidenberg’s concept of metaphor in Ancient and Modern contexts

Abstract

Freidenberg’s work might still be of relevance, not just in relation to more recent theories of metaphor, but also as a heuristic device in the study of archaic Greek poetry. Almost half of a century earlier than Lakoff and his circle Freidenberg’s researches of metaphor anticipated the emergency of the common interest in cognitive function of metaphor. Unlike contemporary cognitivists Freidenberg treated metaphor (as well as any kind of allegory) diachronicaly. She asserted that metaphoric images originate from their mythic predecessors while their rhetorical function in the archaic literature appears to be projections of the earlier cognitive one. Relics of primitive thought Freidenberg treated as “cultural survivals” of a collective belief.