Re: Using METONYMS; was: O Duty (Was: "If")

Sally Caves wrote:

> But "metaphor" came in a while ago from the late Greek.
And is painted on moving-vans all over Greece today.

> Hmmm.  I'm not clear about this here.  How has this stripping made
> possible the "major religions"?  I would think quite the opposite.  It
> may have made modern science possible, but the major religions I see
> on the other side of the fence in this argument.
The religions of the Book have for the most part rejected a purely
metaphorical world-view (this is that) for a metonymic one
(this is put for that).  Ps, 72:17 (KJV) poetically says:

        His [God's] name shall endure forever,
        his name shall be continued as long as the sun.

But this God is no sun-god; Deut. 17:2-5 warns explicitly:

        If there be found among you [...] man or woman, that
        hath [...] gone and served other gods, and worshipped
        them, either the sun, or moon, or any of the host
        of heaven, which I have not commanded [...], [t]hen
        shalt thou bring forth that man or that woman [...]
        and shalt stone them with stones, till they die.

Typology, not metaphor, is the controlling metaphor of the Bible.  :-)

Northrop Frye gives this example, from John 3:8:

# 3:8 The wind bloweth where it listeth [desires], and thou hearest the
# sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it
# goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit.

"Spirit" in this case = "pneuma", and a fully metaphorical translation
of the last clause would be "That's what people are like who are
born from the wind."

In turn, the modern world has for the most part rejected the
metonymic world-view for a simile-based one [this is like that],
obscuring the deep differences between its two predecessors.

--
John Cowan      http://www.ccil.org/~cowan              cowan@ccil.org
        You tollerday donsk?  N.  You tolkatiff scowegian?  Nn.
        You spigotty anglease?  Nnn.  You phonio saxo?  Nnnn.
                Clear all so!  'Tis a Jute.... (Finnegans Wake 16.5)