Translating Investments: Metaphor and the Dynamics of Cultural Change in Tudor-Stuart England

In this wide-ranging book, Judith Anderson studies the functioning of metaphor as a constructive force within language, religious doctrine and politics, literature, rhetoric, and economics. Invoking a provocative metaphorical concept from Andy Clark’s version of cognitive science, she construes metaphor as a form of scaffolding fundamental to human culture. A more traditional or controversial conception of this is sublation - Hegel’s Aufhebung, or raising, as the philosophers Jacques Derrida and Paul Ricoeur have understood the term. From beginning to end, this study not only shows how history and theory can be mutually enlightening, but touches also upon the present, engaging questions about language, rhetoric, and reading within poststructuralism and neocognitivism.