<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">

<p>There is a growing interest in cognitive approaches to literature in recent years; undoubtedly conceptual metaphor has become one of the favourite topics for analysis. George Lakoff and Mark Johnson in Metaphors We Live By (1980), assert that metaphor is not just a matter of words; rather it is inherently conceptual and conceptual metaphors help us comprehend abstract concepts in terms of more concrete ones. This article proposes that metaphor is used to overcome the inadequacy of language in the face of indescribable phenomena, such as slavery, racism and multiple oppressions of black women throughout history in Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad (2016). Patricia Collins tries to convey through her work, Black Feminist Thought (2000), which will be used here, that all these oppressions exist even today. The result of this study indicates that Whitehead has picked up and given life to the old slavery story to emotionally engage a global audience at the present time, when racial hatred seems to be a thing of the past.</p>
</abstract>

There is a growing interest in cognitive approaches to literature in recent years; undoubtedly conceptual metaphor has become one of the favourite topics for analysis. George Lakoff and Mark Johnson in Metaphors We Live By (1980), assert that metaphor is not just a matter of words; rather it is inherently conceptual and conceptual metaphors help us comprehend abstract concepts in terms of more concrete ones. This article proposes that metaphor is used to overcome the inadequacy of language in the face of indescribable phenomena, such as slavery, racism and multiple oppressions of black women throughout history in Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad (2016). Patricia Collins tries to convey through her work, Black Feminist Thought (2000), which will be used here, that all these oppressions exist even today. The result of this study indicates that Whitehead has picked up and given life to the old slavery story to emotionally engage a global audience at the present time, when racial hatred seems to be a thing of the past.

Traveling Ever Toward Freedom: A Metaphorical Feminist Study of Colson Whitehead’s <italic>the Underground Railroad</italic>

Romanian Journal of English Studies

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Traveling Ever Toward Freedom: A Metaphorical Feminist Study of Colson Whitehead’s 

There is a growing interest in cognitive approaches to literature in recent years; undoubtedly conceptual metaphor has become one of the favourite topics for...

Traveling Ever Toward Freedom: A Metaphorical Feminist Study of Colson Whitehead’s the Underground Railroad

Published Online: Jan 05, 2021

Page range: 38 - 52

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/rjes-2020-0006

Keywords
Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad, cognitive linguistics, freedom, metaphor, matrix of domination, slavery

© 2020 Afsaneh Askar Motlagh, published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Traveling Ever Toward Freedom: A Metaphorical Feminist Study of Colson Whitehead’s the Underground Railroad

Published Online: Jan 05, 2021

Page range: 38 - 52

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/rjes-2020-0006

KeywordsColson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad, cognitive linguistics, freedom, metaphor, matrix of domination, slavery

© 2020 Afsaneh Askar Motlagh, published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Keywords
Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad, cognitive linguistics, freedom, metaphor, matrix of domination, slavery