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Body Symbolism in Old Norse Myth

Jan Kozák presents his postdoc project about bodily metaphors

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This presentation will give an overview of the 2-year Marie Curie Fellowship postdoc project. The aim of the project is to investigate the integrative  function of bodily metaphors in Old Norse myths and explore the ways how the image of the body is used as a mapping tool that provides orientation and imbues mythological motifs with multifaceted meanings, gives them power and applicability (which is one of the constitutive features of functioning myths).

The research is composed of four basic foci:

1) an overview of the presence of body symbolism across the corpus of Old Norse myths - a selective perspective that allows to bring forth inner parallels and analogies in thought-patterns within the mythic material.

2) an in-depth study of selected motifs: separated body parts as metaphors for power, inspiration, wisdom etc.

3) the effect of the process of transition from the pre-Christian to Christian symbolic system and the discontinuities in the body image and body symbolism.

4) general question of the production of meaning and orientation through the usage of metaphors, especially body-metaphors, and the assessment of some of the contemporary cognitive-linguistic, semiotic and anthropological frameworks that theorize myth and metaphor.

 

Jan Kozák is a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Bergen since August 2018. He has previously worked as a lecturer at the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at the Charles University in Prague. 

 

All interested parties are welcome!