“Paris, c’est la France.” Popular expression

“Paris, Capital of the Nineteenth Century,” Walter Benjamin (1935)

The Eiffel Tower (1889) (more than 236 million visitors since)

A moveable feast, Ernest Hemingway (1964, posthumously)

The use of metonyms and metaphors to describe, evoke, and imagine the city and particular cities is often associated to modern times, but has probably existed for as long as cities have. This essay aims to tentatively reflect on the potential usefulness for a more historically and sociologically informed analysis of understanding the city and particular cities as metonyms and metaphors for other constructs and realities or, alternatively, as subjects of metaphors and metonyms.

It is suggested a historical and geographical genealogy of the metaphors and metonyms associated with or imposed on particular cities at different times might be a good point of departure for a better understanding of the modes in which popular, literary, scientific and political imaginations operate in this regard. Who imagines what, where and when?

This obviously constitutes an immense empirical task, which this essay does not aspire to undertake. As already intimated, the aim is here to critically reflect on the potential of these rhetorical figures for the study of the city and particular cities. Firstly, how could the genealogy we are suggesting be constructed and applied (historical dimension)? Secondly, how could the use of metaphors and metonyms as analytical tools contribute to our investigations and representations of urban phenomena (sociological dimension)?