Posted by Joseph Lynn, Obl. ULM
April 18, 2011 -
#Oblates Benedict Rule
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669 views
Incompatibility
Metaphor involves speaking of something (tenor) as though it were another (vehicle). "She runs fast, the girl is a deer." The claimed equation between the tenor and vehicle, girl and deer, is clearly not true, factually or literally. This incompatibility may initially disturb or confuse the audience. Some will discard the whole claim as nonsense: the girl is not a deer! This decision ends the metaphorical process. Others will be teased by the dissonance, the seeming incompatibility, into engaging and exploring the possibility of new insight.
Recognition
Once the audience looks at the basic term of the metaphor (tenor) through the lens of the new suggestion (vehicle), a shock of recognition may occur, the awareness that something is unquestionably right and revealing about the relation of the two terms. Without the suggested vehicle, something in the tenor would have remained obscure and hidden. All metaphor is basically a way of speaking about something unknown--at least, lesser known or hidden aspects--in terms of what is better known. The discovery of new associations provides the audience with a new way of seeing the world.
Transformation
Holding together in imagination the particular tenor and vehicle of the metaphor, the audience sees new possibilities. Really compelling metaphors energize the audience to keep exploring the new understanding, playing out some of the implications of the metaphor. This may lead not only to a restructuring of understanding, but even to a reestimate of sustaining values. The metaphor has a transforming force for the life of the audience.
Tensiveness
An important tension runs through all the steps of this metaphorical process. For all the insight from new associative possibilities discovered in the correlation of tenor and vehicle, the terms remain distinct and different. The tension of "is" and "is not" running through the entire metaphorical process will produce invariably an ambiguity in thinking. Because the audience has different backgrounds for understanding the associative possibilities of the metaphor and because the tenor itself is in someway mysterious, no uniform meaning can emerge from the exploration of metaphor. A pluralism of possibilities must be honored and can be fruitfully discussed with clarifications both of personal experience and of metaphoric associations. When the creative world shaped by the metaphor collapses into a neat dogmatic proposition, then tension is broken and the process fails.
Dominus Vobiscum,
Br. Joseph
