1. Emerson, Thoreau, and the Nature of Metonymy
... was not limited to minor occasions in one or two later works. In the earliest appearance of the word "metonomy" in Emerson's writing, in the 1845 journal W, Emerson initiates discussion of "parallelism" and, more familiarly, the "doctrine of symbols or Correspondence" informed by Emanuel Swedenborg, by writing the line that will return years later in "Art and Criticism": "All conversation, ... describe as fixed and final. (71) This is the thrust of Emerson's criticism of the dogmatic direction that Swedenborg's doctrine of correspondences took in his later years: the mystic sought to fix...
- Word Count: 9971
- Approx Pages: 40
- Grade Level: Undergraduate