1. Emerson, Thoreau, and the Nature of Metonymy
... What follows in this opening of Emerson's "Goethe; or, The Writer," the final chapter of Representative Men (1850), is a vivid example of metonymy in Emerson's thinking and writing. "The planet, the pebble, goes attended by its shadow. The rolling rock leaves its scratches on the mountain; the river, ... is nothing inorganic," Thoreau claims of his words and the natural world he observes reemerging in the phenomena of Walden's "Spring." In this penultimate chapter, Thoreau describes the "hybrid product" of "sand foliage" he observes in the thawing of an exposed sandbank as he moves remar...
- Word Count: 9971
- Approx Pages: 40
- Grade Level: Undergraduate