Metonymy is device by which the attributes of an item connected to a person are transferred to that person. It has become popular recently in critical terminology and seems to have moved away from its earlier more limited use whereby the crown refers to the King or Queen more like a simple emblem.
An example would be that in Chapter 24 of Jane Austen's Emma when Frank Churchill is buying "sleek, well-tied parcels" of gloves and we feel that he is also smooth and covering something up.
See my analysis on my website Classics of English Literature: essays by Barbara Daniels
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