Emerson's English Traits and the Natural History of Metaphor

Metaphors are ubiquitous and yetor, for that very reasongo largely unseen. We are all variously susceptible to a blindness or blurry vision of metaphors; yet even when they are seen clearly, we are left to situate the ambiguities, conflations and contradictions they regularly presentlogically, aesthetically and morally. David LaRoccas book serves as a set of reminders of certain features of the natural history of our languageespecially the tropes that permeate and define it. As part of his investigation, LaRocca turns to Ralph Waldo Emersons only book on a single topic, English Traits (1856), which teems with genealogical and generative metaphorsblood, birth, plants, parents, family, names and race. In the first book-length study of English Traits in over half a century, LaRocca considers the presence of metaphors in Emersons fertile texta unique work in his expansive corpus, and one that is regularly overlooked. As metaphors are encountered in Emersons book, and drawn from a long history of usage in work by others, a reader may realize (or remember) what is inherent and encoded in our language, but rarely seen: how metaphors circulate in speech and through texts to become the lifeblood of thought.