The Educational Function of Metaphor in the Aphoristic Sayings of Proverbs

Many proverbial sayings make significant use of metaphor not simply to enhance their rhetorical appeal but to convey essential meaning. By examining aphorisms that refer to human discourse, this article argues that a cognitive approach to metaphor not only sheds light on the didactic power of aphorisms, but also opens new avenues of intertextual analysis among the various sayings and collections of Proverbs. Such an approach high-lights, for example, the differing metaphorical schemas employed by the so-called Solomonic and Hezekian collections.