Language in the Garden: Transcendentalist Legacies and the Problem of Metaphor in Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead Novels

This article interrogates two established critical approaches to Marilynne Robinson’s fiction. First, by analysing the Gilead novels’ engagement with nineteenth-century Transcendentalism, challenges centrality of metaphor literary project. I show how, in these novels, Robinson resurrects divide between Emersonian and Thoreauvian metonymy. There has been a recent move understand fiction relation modern contemporary forbears, but this shows complexity, contradiction self-criticism that inheres Transcendentalism. Secondly connectedly, my argument complicates current consensus home is most significant locus novels. argue indoor domestic spaces novels are associated metaphorical language critiquing and, turn, their garden form more tangible relationship action process.