Analysing metaphor in religious discourse in literature

Religious language is everywhere. Belief construction and reconstruction also underpins much literary endeavour. However, consideration of the presence of religious language in literary texts is missing in much recent work on religious language. This chapter aims to redress this critical lacuna by sketching the ways in which metaphor and its analysis can be used to both identify and explicate the religious discourse underpinning literary texts. As a by-product, this chapter hopes to illustrate that the presence of explicitly religious language should not be a prerequisite for work in this area, particularly because any language used in ‘religious’ contexts can be analysed as ‘religious language’.