Metaphor, Metonymy, and the Poetics of Space and Time in Contemporary Literature

A comprehensive study of how Anglophone fiction reconceptualizes fundamental categories of human experience is presented in this work. It explores how readers navigate the dynamic interplay between temporality and spatiality within narratives, and how metaphorical and metonymic processes transform these concepts, thereby bridging the disciplines of cognitive linguistics, cognitive poetics, literary theory, and narratology. The study demonstrates that location and time are never mere backdrops; rather, they are actively constructed through figurative language and narrative structure. This work, combining theoretical rigor with critical interpretation, offers a novel methodological framework for understanding how literary and linguistic figurations integrate temporal and spatial dimensions into narrative structures. It argues that literature occupies a distinctive position in revealing both the convergences and divergences between lived experience and cultural imagination, fostering a poetics that is simultaneously analytically rigorous and deeply human. Scholars and advanced students of literary studies, cognitive poetics, linguistics, and comparative literature, as well as anyone interested in the intersections of language, place, time, and narrative possibilities in modern culture, will find this book essential reading.