"Although metonymy has long been recognized as being a central device in poetic language, it has received little critical attention in its own right. Not only has this created a gap in literary analytical scholarship which needs to be addressed, but it has also allowed for problematic appropriations of metonymy as a critical concept now widely in use in structuralist studies across the humanities. Rethinking Metonymy is the first monograph to confront and resolve these issues, developing a ground-breaking new definition of metonymy on the basis of an evaluation of examples in Greek tragedy and lyric poetry, but also classicizing and Romantic German poetry."-- Back of jacket.
Includes bibliographical references (pages 287-301) and indexes.