1. Emerson, Thoreau, and the Nature of Metonymy
... coal and bones in soil; in the sentence, each transitional form is an epitaph of transition. This same metonymy of metamorphosis is evident in the various convertible terms that Emerson reiterates in his journals around his discussion of metamorphosis. In the 1847 journals, for example, we find "transition," "mediation," "transit," "metonomy," "transmigration," "circulation," "rhetoric." (29) From Goethe ... not find cubes, or prisms, or atoms, at all, but spherules of force. (32) Faraday's "spherules of force" offers Emerson a crucial analogy for a material thinking of metamorphosis. Th...
- Word Count: 9971
- Approx Pages: 40
- Grade Level: Undergraduate