Space for deliberation: image schemas, metaphorical reasoning, and the dilemma of Pelasgus

This chapter presents a close reading of the metaphors employed by Pelasgus in Aeschylus’ Suppliants as he responds to the Danaids’ request to grant them asylum. Using a range of cognitive tools, notably the notion of image schemas but also relevance theory and blending, it reads the metaphors as not merely a form of literary expression but also a mechanism through which Pelasgus evaluates the situation and considers what courses of action are open to him. The chapter explicitly confronts the question whether cognitive literary theory is capable of generating new readings, and argues that the reading presented in it could not have been arrived at by means of conventional accounts of metaphor.