Dramatic Literature, Criticism and Theory Commons^™

Comic Ritual In A Tragic World: Lessons In The Metaphor Of Drama, Daniel Larner

Fairhaven Faculty Publications

Metaphor and drama share an essence: transformation. A metaphor carries one world of meaning to another, enlarging what it comes to by what it brings along with it. What is at stake is a meaning, which is transformed to something quite beyond its original state.

Drama takes an action done by characters, and transforms it from the mundane to the meaningful, carrying meaning from the realm of its factuality to wider worlds. Seen this way, drama transforms all action to the act of understanding, of putting some sort of prop under mere fact, of supplying--by some combination of rational, imagistic, …

Metaphor Ii: Understanding Dramatic Form In The Transportation Systems Of Metaphor, Daniel Larner

Fairhaven Faculty Publications

This paper is a continuation of an investigation into the essence of metaphor. I will argue here that dramatic action seems to epitomize that essence and intensify it. Further, I will argue that the world of tragicomedy is an ancient, almost genetic metaphor for the course of human events and the way of the world. It is a form of perception, a way of knowing. The vitality of contemporary tragicomedy, and the analogy between dramatic action and the metaphors of physics show us how fundamental this view has come to be.