Synecdoche – an underestimated macrofigure?

Abstract

This article analyses the constructive potential of synecdoche as a text-building mechanism. All too often not properly distinguished from its close and better-known relative, metonymy, synecdoche deserves to be treated as a separate figure, with its own individual function to perform. In this capacity it has already been mentioned by Giambattista Vico (1984 [1744]) as the trope of essentiality, pointing to outstanding features that pertain to individuals and objects. Synecdoche has retained its unique status among Kenneth Burke’s (1962 [1945]) master tropes and among Hayden White’s (1973, 1985a [1978], 1985b [1978], 1999a, 1999b) basic tropes, which organize various forms of narrative discourse. Synecdoche as a microfigure is usually confined to phrases or, at most, clauses but its genuinely discursive function becomes visible when it acts as a macrofigure, forming synecdochical chains that structure larger stretches of texts. Following the cognitivist claim about the predominance of the experience related to our own bodies over other types of perception, I turn my attention to one of frequent types of synecdoche that represents living organisms through their body parts. The chains of body parts synecdoches will be examined, drawn from Marcel Proust’s prose, as well as from a set of poems by Sylvia Plath and a set of poetic works by Czesław Miłosz. The structuring force of synecdoche becomes visible in the texts’ overall cohesion. Finally, an important theoretical aspect of the application of macrosynecdoche is its smooth transition into a megafigure, a tacit rhetorical strategy that underlies the entire text and influences its ultimate interpretation.