Metaphor Theory
Howe, Bonnie. Because You Bear This Name: Conceptual Metaphor and the Meaning of 1 Peter. Boston: Brill, 2006.
Kövecses, Zoltán. Metaphor: A Practical Introduction. New York: Oxford U P, 2002.
Lakoff, George and Mark Johnson. Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1980. Revised edition with ne afterward, 2003.
Lakoff, George and Mark Turner. More Than Cool Reason: A Field Guide to Poetic Metaphor. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1989.
Rossow, Justin. “Preaching the Story Behind the Image: A Narrative Approach to Metaphor for Preaching.” Ph. D. diss., Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, 2009.
For the Preacher’s Desk
Preus, Jacob A. O. Just Words: Understanding the Fullness of the Gospel. St. Louis: CPH, 2000.
Ryken, Leland, James C. Wilhoit, and Tremer Longman III, gen. eds. Dictionary of Biblical Imagery. Downers Grove,Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1998.
Williams, David J. Paul’s Metaphors: Their Context and Character. Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 1999.
Worksheets
You may find it helpful to fill out and make explicit the narrative structure of a metaphor in the text, in the culture, or in a sermon. Making decisions about the implied narrative helps make interpretive decisions more obvious. Here are two worksheets you can use to fill in the blanks left by metaphor. The first is a basic Who/What/How set of narrative questions. The second expresses the relationships inherent in a narrative structure by using Greimas’ Actantial Model. Both provide blanks for both the source and the target domain.
justinrossow.com 