Metaphors and History in Slovak Documentary
Metaphors and History in Slovak Documentary

Summary/Abstract: According to Lakoff’s and Johnson’s theory of conceptual metaphors, metaphors provide a partial understanding of one kind of experience in terms of another kind of experience. Therefore they help us to understand our present and/or our past reality. In his Metahistory, Hayden White states historians often approach their topic tropologically pre-figuring it. By choosing a predominant trope they see history through, they also choose the genre for their writing. Referring to these works on tropes, we study several creative methods that appear in contemporary Slovak historical documentary. From “cans of time”, a metaphorical concept of cinematographic memories, presented by Marek Šulík, through the oeuvre of Peter Kerekes in which the metaphor is used as an element of structure, to debuting Anabela Žigová or Vladislava Plančíková who use metaphors to reflect on historical research, Slovak authorial documentaries represent a very inspiring metahistorical material.

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