[[Charles Dickens|Charles Dickens's]] style [[Dickens's style is extremely rich|is extremely rich]]. One aspect of this is that his [[style]] blends and blurs [[metaphor]] and [[metonymy]], and thereby "breaks the rules" of Victorian [[realist novel|Realism]]. ### Fanciful metonymic connections [[J. Hillis Miller]], in [[Miller 1991 - The Fiction of Realism|The Fiction of Realism]], looks at how [[Sketches by Boz (1833-36)]] are full of metonymic details that are not based on [[metonymy relies on pre-existing chains of knowledge|pre-existing or well-known referents]], but are, rather, totally fanciful: > “Side by side with the realistic way of seeing the Sketches as the discovery by Boz of true stories hidden behind the objects he encounters in his walks through London, there is another way which involves the same elements but with reverse polarity, as the ghost of the other way, its ‘negative,’ in which black becomes white, white black. To see the Sketches in this new way ==**is to recognize that metonymy is as much a fiction as metaphor**==. Both are the assertion of a false identity or of a false causal connection. ==**The metonymic associations which Boz makes are fancies rather than facts**==, impositions on the signs he sees of stock conventions, not mirroring but interpretation, which is to say, lie. A man’s doorknocker is no necessary indication of his personality. It only seems so to the imagining mind of the inimitable Boz” (145). An example Miller gives is the claim that a man's doorknocker is an [[indexical sign]] for what the man himself will look like: > Whenever we visit a man for the first time, we contemplate the features of his knocker with the greatest curiosity, **for we well know, that between the man and his knocker, there will inevitably be a greater or less degree of resemblance and sympathy.** ([[Sketches by Boz (1833-36)|Sketches]], "Our Next-Door Neighbour") This is patently rubbish! People don't *look like* their door knockers. Compare this to how metonymy [[an exercise for teaching metonymy and realism|normally works in Victorian Realism]]. Sure, if you see a house with an _expensive_ door-knocker that might be an index of the fact that the owners are rich or something, but that doesn't mean there's a visual similarity between the owners and their door-knocker! That's silly. A relationship based on similarity should be some kind of weird metaphor... but Dickens is using the door-knocker as a metonymy. But that's what Dickens does. He breaks those rules. Metaphor and metonymy blur together. ### Even weirder, denser examples There's more to Dickens's [[style]] than fanciful metonymic connections. He blends and blurs metaphor and metonymy in other, more explicit ways. Here's an interesting example: #### Wegg's road to the Roman Empire ![[Wegg's road to the Roman Empire]] #### The "fog" in Bleak House's Opening ![[the fog metonym in Bleak House's opening]]