Metaphoric and Metonymic Allegory: Ricoeur, Jakobson, and the Poetry of W. B. Yeats

Abstract

Elsewhere, I have pointed out that Paul Ricoeur denies symbolic effect to language situations where the original sense of an expression is destroyed in the process of interpretation, calling such discourse “allegory”, the mere “rhetorical” and “didactic” procedure in which the literal meaning is “eliminated once it has done its job”. The point emerged that Ricoeur needs two categories — one in which the initial sense is destroyed (Ricoeur’s “allegory”), and the other in which the original meaning is retained and added to the second meaning (Ricoeur’s “symbol”). If we are to have a dual paradigm, I argued that it is more helpful to subject symbolism to Roman Jakobson’s paradigm, establishing two forms of symbolism, each signaled by contextual cues: the metaphoric symbol, in which the literal expression is discarded, and the métonymie symbol in which no such discarding occurs (Wilson 151). I concluded that under Jakobson’s paradigm, Ricoeur’s “allegory” is metaphorical symbolism and Ricoeur’s “symbolism” is métonymie symbolism.