Metaphorical expressions of biblical and sacral origin in Russian secular literary texts, with reference to their English equivalents

Abstract

In this dissertation, I examine metaphorical expressions of biblical and sacral origin (bibleisms) that occur in Russian narrative literary texts. The interpretation of bibleisms is carried out within the framework of interaction theories of metaphor, making it possible to account for the use of bibleisms in Modern Russian, and for the role of their original meanings in the development of their new metaphorical associations. This is viewed as a set of intertextual relationships between the biblical and sacral texts, the Modern Russian language and the literary texts in which the expressions occur. Different types of metaphor are distinguished in terms of interaction theory. This has implications for the translation of bibleisms. It is demonstrated that in different interactive situations, the same bibleism can be referred to different types of metaphor, and hence the translation procedure may only be determined by taking into account the metaphorical language in each individual case.