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The root, Christy Wampole argues, functions as an absolute metaphor by expressing an idea that is "impossible to express in nonfigurative terms" (16). Taking this notion of absolute metaphoricity (developed by Hans Blumenburg) as the premise of her study, Wampole sets out to trace the development and diverse iterations of the root metaphor. Her inquiry adds to contemporary scholarship in migration studies and identity politics, which regularly appeal to the notions of rootedness and rootlessness: beyond matters of identity, the ubiquity of the root metaphor attests, for Wampole, to a general botanization of the human. Though the focus remains largely restricted to France and Germany, the scope of fields examined is rich, and the analysis, rigorous and accessible. For example, she cogently investigates the root metaphor as an expression of connectedness in select poems by Francis Ponge, Paul Celan, and Eugène Guillevic, offering a detailed reading of the latter's Racines; interrogates rootedness as the precondition for transcendence—the movement upward predicated on firm grounding—in the œuvre of Paul Claudel; and frames twentieth-century phenomenology as a re-rooting of philosophy in the body of the perceiving subject, notably via a close reading of Sartre's La Nausée in connection with L'Être et le Néant. Among the many compelling cases she examines, her reading of the root as...