Führen gute Hirten sanft?

Zum Problem der Revitalisierung von Metaphern in historisch vergleichender Perspektive

Abstract

This article systematically explores the linguistic contextual determination of both non-conventional and revitalized conventional metaphors. It differentiates three types of embeddings in terms of their pragmatic, semantic and rhetorical functions. In order to provide evidence for the cross-cultural prevalence of these types of embeddings, it is shown that they shape the textual environment of an exemplary metaphor, namely the metaphor of the shepherd for the ruler, in literatures that are distant in space and time. This is illustrated by selected examples from ancient and medieval Chinese literature on the one hand, and Latin and Middle High German literature of the European Middle Ages on the other. It turns out that (1) the metaphor of the shepherd was developed independently in different textual cultures, that (2) it underwent different conceptual interpretations in the process, and that (3) the embeddings employed for this purpose are nonetheless identical and thus may have universal status.