How does the concept of time, elusive and inconceivable as it may be, lend itself to verbal creativity? Is it possible to trace something like a "poetics of time"? This book embarks on this endeavor initiated by the assumption that verbal creativity can shed some new light on our understanding of time, challenging everyday linguistic patterns and manipulating mental representations in unforeseen ways. Drawing on empirical evidence from Modern Greek poetry, the book offers a unified account of time conceptualization along a continuum of various degrees of non-conventionality. It also shows, unlike what has been traditionally assumed in the literature, that creativity in the expression of time is not limited to metaphor but extends to other figurative tropes that are perhaps specific to poetry. Poetry thus transpires as an ideal testing frame for exploring temporal cognition and meaning construction alike.

• The Poetics of Time – Metaphors and Blends in Language and Literature
• Editorial page
• Title page
• LCC data
• Dedication page
• Epigraph
• Table of contents
• List of diagrams
• List of figures
• List of tables
• Acknowledgements
• Chapter 1. Time, cognition, and poetics
  • 1.1 Time and space
  • 1.2 Aims
  • 1.3 Linguistic meaning and verbal creativity: Cognitive Linguistics vs. Cognitive Poetics?
  • 1.4 The corpus of MG poetry
• Chapter 2. The conceptual structure of time in MG
  • 2.1 Introduction
  • 2.2 Conventionality and metaphor
  • 2.3 Conceptual metaphors vs. generalized integration networks: The case of time
  • 2.4 The conceptual structure of time in MG
  • 2.5 Summary and conclusions
• Chapter 3. Creative metaphors of time
  • 3.1 Introduction
  • 3.2 Creative metaphors of time
  • 3.3 Summary and conclusions
• Chapter 4. Highly creative metaphors of time
  • 4.1 Introduction
  • 4.2 Highly creative metaphors of time
  • 4.3 Summary and conclusions
• Chapter 5. Non-metaphorical figurative expressions of time
  • 5.1 Introduction
  • 5.2 Non-metaphorical figurative expressions of time
  • 5.3 Summary and conclusions
• Chapter 6. Time from metaphor and beyond?
• References
• Index