“LEARNING IS MOVEMENT AND TRAVELLING.” Metaphors referring to JOURNEY in John Henry Newman’s The Idea of a University (1852)

Abstract

In his book The Idea of a University, John Henry Newman’s (1801-1890) formulated his vision of university education almost two centuries ago. This paper attempts to frame Newman’s view of a university using the theory of conceptual metaphor as originally offered by Lakoff and Johnson in their book Metaphors We Live By (1980 [2003]; cf. also Lakoff and Johnson 1999; Lakoff 1987, 1993; and Kövecses 2015; among others). In particular, the article seeks to establish the main networks of implicational metaphors which, as it is believed, structure Newman’s idea of a university. Principally, there seem to be three main networks of conceptual metaphors underlying our understanding of Newman’s vision of a university: LIFE IS A BUILDING; LIFE IS A LIVING ORGANISM, and LIFE IS A JOURNEY. The paper deals only with the third network in greater detail. In the LIFE IS A JOURNEY metaphor LEARNING is recognized as MOVEMENT AND TRAVELLING, while A LEARNER IS A TRAVELLER, and OBTAINED KNOWLEDGE IS A FINAL DESTINATION.