Full figures: How metaphor, example, and childbirth make culture
Abstract
Metaphor, example, and the figure of the childbearing woman are examined in their capacities to produce culture, and in relation to one another. Two metaphors for invention, both modeled on the childbearing body, are focused on. Firstly, the metaphor The Poem Is A Child, whereby the poem is imagined as a child, the poet as a mother, and the act of writing as labor and birth, is identified as a major contributor to the production of the twentieth century genre of secular childbirth poetry. Emphases include metaphor reversals in the poetry of Ben Jonson and Ntozake Shange; seventeenth century child loss poetry; the three great broken epics or long childbirth poems of twentieth century American poetry: Sylvia Plath's Three Women (1962), Alicia Ostriker's The Mother/Child Papers (1980), and Toi Derricotte's Natural Birth (1983); and the late twentieth century genre of the short secular childbirth lyric, or magnificat. Secondly, the metaphor The Nation Is A Mother, whereby the nation is imagined as a mother of many loyal sons, is tracked in relation to images of Ireland, as represented in nineteenth and twentieth century print culture up to and including the presidency of Mary Robinson, and images of Kosovo, as represented in the U.S. press, 1999–2000. Thirdly, using a range of texts including Moby Dick, William James' “The One and the Many,” and Renaissance painter Bernardino Luini's “Martha and Mary,” example is positioned in relation to metaphor. This study concludes that metaphor and example are figures which make rather than support or ornament our thinking, that the literal and figurative are constructed in relation to one another, that examples constitute rather than illustrate or support the rule, and that the human body in childbirth, often imagined as beyond culture, is a producer and production of metaphor.
Degree
Ph.D.
Advisors
Sagar, Purdue University.
Subject Area
Comparative literature|British and Irish literature|American literature
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