German medieval literature is analyzed from the perspective of cognitive anthropology to demonstrate that the symbolic regulation of social, religious, economic, and political spheres of life is explainable in terms of metonymy and its underlying relationship between the part and the whole. George Lakoff and Mark Johnson's treatment of metonymy in 'Leben in Metaphern. Konstruktion und Gebrauch von Sprachbildern' (The Metaphors We Live By. The Construction and Use of Linguistic Images] Heidelberg, 2000) and the interpretation of metonymy as a cognitive operation in K.-U. Panther and G. Radden's [Eds] 'Metonymy in Language and Thought' (Amsterdam, 1999) are utilized in the analysis. After a schematic representation of referential metonymy, excerpts from Middle High German literature are interpreted to show how referential metonymy of language use reflects the metonymic participation in social symbolic practice. The study demonstrates how metonymic relations are represented in the various forms of medieval narratives and how productive metonymic operations are in the literature of the period. (Z. Dubiel in LLBA, Accession Number 200501274, (c) CSA [2004]. All rights reserved)