181 Conceptual metaphors of travel and stability is, travel is a concrete and an essential part of lived experience of human life throughout history. Secondly, the image schema of the source domain reflects a common embodied experience of the world. This image schema is the ‘source-path-goal’ scheme, which is essential to travel experience, but also generally of daily movement of our body.612 This schematic structure of source-path-goal, which is an essential characteristic of the human experience of travel/movement, closely corresponds to experiences of aspects of life more broadly. Considering these correspondences in the embodied experience of life and travel, it is understandable that the life is a journey conceptual metaphor has had such a long tradition and was also used by hagiographers of the ninth century. However, the prevalence and stability of the conceptual metaphor does not mean there is no variation in its usage over time and possibly between genres.613 In my analysis of the Life of Gregory, I found that the target domain of multiple linguistic metaphorical expressions refer to a particular aspect of life: that is, a way of life or conduct, specifically in the context of a virtuous life.614 In medieval Greek hagiography this aspect – way of life or conduct – may be captured by the word πολιτεία (hereafter: politeia).615 The linguistic expressions of travel metaphors found in the Life of Gregory of Decapolis, may reflect a hagiographical variance (politeia is a journey) of the enduring life is a journey metaphor.616 Additionally, we see in the Life of Gregory that the conceptual metaphor purposes are destinations interacts with the politeia is a journey metaphor, whereby the purposes are both reaching a virtuous way of life and reaching heaven.617 This use of metaphors may also be dependent on the specifically Christian cultural context in which hagiographers wrote.618 612 For example, getting up from a chair (source) to walk (path) towards a coffee machine (goal); the source-pathgoal structure is also characteristic of how we move parts of body, e.g., stretching out (path) our arm (source) to grasp a coffee cup (goal). 613 Mantova, for example, observed a subtle change in the usage of the life is a journey metaphor between the Old and the New Testament: ‘In the Old Testament, we find numerous examples demonstrating a singular determination to follow the way, which is understood to be wide and straight. In contrast, in the New Testament, […] the highway is a path to be avoided, whereas the path to be followed is that of the constrained and thorny road’. Mantova (2023), p. 232. See also Díaz-Vera (2015). 614 See the appendix for the examples occurring in the Life of Gregory. 615 Mantova and I have independently found that a variation on the life is a journey metaphor is dominant among travel-related metaphors in middle-Byzantine hagiography/the Life of Gregory. I identified this conceptual metaphor as politeia is a journey, the target thus specifically being the monks’ conduct or way of life. Mantova saw a similar variance in a larger corpus of medieval Greek hagiography: ‘In the majority of the hagiographical cases […] this metaphor of the righteous road, in reference to a pious way of life, acts as a specific version of the broader metaphor ‘Life is a road’.’ Mantova (2023), p. 233. 616 Demonstrating whether this is actually a hagiographical variance (i.e. whether this metaphorical language use is specific to the genre) or whether it is reflected in other genres as well, and establishing since what time this metaphorical usage developed, would require analysis of a larger corpus of multiple genres and covering a longer time span, and which thus cannot be established in the present analysis. Here we merely observe that it is a variant of the life is a journey metaphor, that this variant is found in a hagiographical text and that it seems one that is suitable for this genre. 617 See the linguistic metaphorical expressions in appendix 9. Note how ‘reaching’ and ‘way of life’ are both linguistic metaphorical expressions of the life is a journey conceptual metaphor (‘reaching’ specifically expressing purposes are destinations), illustrating the point that conventional expressions are suffused with metaphors and that it is hard to write and think without recourse to metaphors. 618 Although not exclusive to hagiographers. 4
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTk4NDMw