Metonymy

Metonymy is a figure of speech that is closely related to metaphor, of which it is a kind. In metonymy, one word substitutes for a related word (Baldick). The replacement word sometimes is a part that stands for the whole (the replaced word), in which case the form of metonymy it called a synecdoche (Tufte 13). Newspapers commonly use metonyms in headlines, when they say, for example, that “Scotland Yard Investigates a Murder” or “The White House Defends Health Law”—in these cases, Scotland Yard signifies the British investigative police and the White House signifies the current U.S. president and his administration. An example of a synecdoche is when someone says there are a certain amount of “mouths to feed” (Baldick).

Metonymy as figurative language, especially in fiction, can be more abstract, for example, when Vladimir Nabokov writes in Ada, “She was exasperation, she was torture” (Tufte 13). It often involves using the verb to be to make equative metaphors. Metonyms also work as signifiers—in any form of narrative, they can be used to express more meaning than the word or words literally imply. Martin Amis and Virginia Woolf both take advantage of this useful function.

The narrator in Time’s Arrow uses Auschwitz literally, but it is likely that Amis suspects that the reader will use Auschwitz as a stand-in for the Holocaust in general, which makes the impact greater. A hint that he may be using Auschwitz metonymically is given when he writes, “Auschwitz lay around me, miles and miles of it, like a somersaulted Vatican” (Amis, 116). The Vatican is a common metonym for the Catholic Church, and so this comparison suggests that Auschwitz has a parallel deeper signification. Amis plays with other signifiers, like America and American (“affable, melting-pot, primary-color, You’re-okay-I’m-okay America”, Amis, 6). Often, in Time’s Arrow and generally, the lines of metaphor and metonymy blur—the subtle distinctions between the two have, indeed, been a major subject of inquiry, a question whom two influential critics, Roman Jacobson and David Lodge, have tried to address (Ronen, “Description, Narrative, and Representation,” 285).

Virginia Woolf uses metonymy more regularly than Amis. She uses Buckingham Palace (over a dozen instances) the Court (72, 95, etc.) as metonyms for the monarchy. She uses place names like Whitehall and buildings like Westminster as stand-ins for the British government and Parliament (49-50). But more importantly, for her characters, certain places serve metonym-like roles, conjuring memories or associations of the past. For Peter Walsh, India serves this function, also substituting for the dying British Empire in general (“…disliking India, and empire, and army as he did…”, 54). Meanwhile, for Clarissa Dalloway, Bournton stands in for her past—also representing her father and her childhood (57). Woolf relies on metonymy in her efforts to mimic real patterns of thought, because indeed when we think of a certain place or thing, it often means so much more to us, becoming a kind of stand-in for our own complex feelings, emotions, and desires. Woolf, Amis, and other authors have realized the power of metonymy in literature and narrative.

Works Cited:

Amis, Martin. Time’s Arrow. New York: Vintage Books, 1991. Print.

Baldick, Chris. “Metonymy.” Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. Web. 19 October 2013.

Baldick, Chris. “Synecdoche.” Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. Web. 19 October 2013.

Jakobson, Roman. “Linguistics and Poetics.” In: Style in Language, edited by T. Sebeok, 350-377. New York: Cambridge, 1960. Web. 19 October 2013.

Lodge, David. The Modes of Modern Writing: Metaphor, Metonymy and the Typology of Modern Literature. Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press, 1977. Print.

Ronen, Ruth. “Description, Narrative and Representation.” In: Narrative, Vol. 5, No. 3 (Oct., 1997), 274-286. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1997. Web. 19 October 2013.

Tufte, Virginia. Artful Sentences: Syntax as Style. Cheshire, CT: Graphics Press, 2006.

Woolf, Virginia. Mrs. Dalloway. London: Harcourt, 1925. Print.