A Study of the Spatial Metaphors of Despair and Hope in Four Novels of the Last Four Decades

Literature in every period has shown and reflected the conditions of the society from the progress and decline to despair and hope of its people. Happiness and sadness are two important elements in life which are expressed in language and literature. The present study has tried to investigate the metaphors of despair and hope in the literature of the recent four decades and the impact of society on it in the most popular novels of the last four decades based on the framework of Lakoff (1980). For this purpose, four popular novels from the 60s "Nakhlhaye Bisar", 70s "Roye Mahe Khoda ra Bebos", 80s "Cheragh ha ra Man Khamosh Mikonam" and the 90s novel "Paeiz Fasle Akhar Ast" were analyzed in a descriptive-analytical way. The body of the research is sentences from all four novels, which were analyzed separately, and metaphors of high and low, which indicate hope and despair, were extracted and analyzed separately. The findings showed that in the literature of all four decades, low metaphors were used more and the highest frequency appeared in the 90s, and the conditions and atmosphere of the society were effective in the ups and downs of these metaphors.