Metonymy in Villette

A new Brontë-related recent publication:

Metonymy as the Means of Reflecting Oriental Culture in "Villette" by Charlotte Brontë
Jianwen Liu

Advances in Social Science, Education and Humanities Research, volume 588

Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Language, Communication and Culture Studies (ICLCCS 2021)

Metonymy is of significance to the creation of literary works, and it is regarded as the symbol of realism. Although seen as the peak of her realistic literary career, Charlotte Brontë's Villette receives much less attention in the academic field. Among the few research works on Villette, the focus is on the traditional literary topics, such as feminism, and none of them touches orientalism. From the perspective of cognitive metonymy, by analyzing the two oriental images of opium and shawl, the authors argue that metonymy plays a vital role in helping Charlotte Brontëto express her opinions about India and China, as well as her cultural bias on those oriental countries. This kind of cultural bias is a typical indicator of orientalism.