The pheonomenon of fire has fascinated humans from the very beginnings of our history. In this highly accessible book, Jonathan Charteris-Black spells out the reasons why this is the case. Through doing a detailed cognitive linguistic analysis, he shows the metaphor-based symbolic meanings of fire in many of its uses in mythology, culture, religion, and current politics. A superb achievement – with wide-ranging implications for understanding how language, culture, and mind work together.

— Zoltan Kovecses, Professor of Linguistics, Eotvos Lorand University, Hungary

Jonathan Charteris-Black explores fire-metaphors across space and time, but argues an ambitious thesis. Fire is not simply a metaphor, but rather a transformative force from which metaphor itself arises as a linguistic universal. This book is rigorous and challenging.

— Terrell Carver, Professor of Political Theory, University of Bristol, UK

Jonathan Charteris-Black is Professor of Linguistics at University of West of England, UK.