Sobre alegoría

7/25/2019 Sobre alegora

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Introduction

ALLEGORY is a protean device, omnipresent in Western literaturefrom the earliest times to the modern era. No comprehensive histori-cal treatment of it exists or would be possible in a single volume, noris it my aim to fill even a part of this gap. Hoping instead to get atthe essence of the mode, I have outlined a theoretical, mainly non-historical analysis of literary elements.

Whereas a full-scale history would entail numberless small ob-servations of changing literary convention, a theoretical treatmentof allegory will succeed by opposite means: it must keep to a planeof generality. We have to account for an even wider variety of mate-rials than with categories like satire, tragedy, or comedy. Onlythe broadest notions, for example the modal concepts of irony ormimesis, embrace so many different kinds of literature. Given thisrange of reference, no narrowly exclusive stipulated definition willbe useful, however desirable it might seem, while formal precision

may at present even be misleading to the student of the subject.What I have attempted, therefore, is to balance the claims of gen-eral theory and simple induction: what follows is a preliminary de-scription intended to yield a model of allegory. I have gone throughsome initial mapping stages of criticism and have asked, in a spiritof theoretical discussion, what sort of characters are called allegori-cal heroes, what sort of things they typically do, what their style ofbehavior is, what sort of images are used to portray their actions and

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character. In brief, I have asked what is the mode of an allegorical

fiction.In the simplest terms, allegory says one thing and means an-

other. It destroys the normal expectation we have about language,that our words mean what they say. When we predicate quality xof person Y, Y really is what our predication says he is (or we as-sume so); but allegory would turn Y into something other (allos)than what the open and direct statement tells the reader.Pushed toan extreme, this ironic usage would subvert language itself, turning

everything into an Orwellian newspeak.

In this sense we see how

Allegory from allos + agoreuein (other + speak openly, speak in the assembly ormarket). Agoreuein connotes public, open, declarative speech. Tis sense is in-

verted by the prefix allos. Tus allegory is often called inversion. E.g., ed. TomasCooper, in Tomas Elyot, BibliothecaEliotae: Eliotes Dictionarie (London, ):Allegoriaa figure called inversion, where it is one in woordes, and an other insentence or meaning; Edward Phillips, in TeNew World ofEnglish Words (thed., London, ): AllegoryInversion or changing: In Rhetorick it is a mysteri-ous saying, wherein there is couched something that is different from the literal

sense. Sometimes the term inversiomay be taken in its original sense of transla-tion, while translatiois but the Latin equivalent of the Greek metaphor. On transla-tion as an exegetical device, see R. M. Grant, Te Letter and the Spirit (London,), . Jules Ppin, in Mytheetallgorie (Paris, ), , finds Plutarch thefirst critic to use the word allegory instead of its older Greek equivalent hypo-noia, also the first to use the verb to allegorize. Te political overtones ofthe verb agoreuein need always to be emphasized, insofar as censorship mayproduce devious, ironical ways of speaking.

Tucydides, Te Peloponnesian War, tr. Rex Warner (Penguin ed., ),III, ch. vi, provides the first major discussion of newspeak in Western his-tory. Describing the revolution in Corcyra, Tucydides shows that the love of

power, operating through greed and through personal ambition, created anew linguistic climate in which language itself was corrupted, as by a plague,the same plague which is a synecdoche, or perhaps a metonymy, for all theills of the Peloponnesian war. Such was the inauguration of the Big Lie. Sorevolutions broke out in city after city. . . . o fit in with the change ofevents, words, too, had to change their usual meanings. What used to bedescribed as a thoughtless act of aggression was now regarded as the courageone would expect to find in a party member; to think of the future and wait

was merely another way of saying one was a coward; any idea of moderationwas just an attempt to disguise ones unmanly character; ability to understand





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allegory is properly considered a mode: it is a fundamental process

of encoding our speech. For the very reason that it is a radical lin-guistic procedure, it can appear in all sorts of different works, manyof which fall far short of the confusing doubleness that made Or-wells newspeak such an effective brainwashing device.

An allegorical mode of expression characterizes a quite extraor-dinary variety of literary kinds: chivalric or picaresque romancesand their modern equivalent, the western, utopian political satires,quasi-philosophical anatomies, personal attacks in epigrammatic

form, pastorals of all sorts, apocalyptic visions, encyclopedic epicscontaining summasof true and false learning, naturalistic muckrak-ing novels whose aim is to propagandize social change, imaginaryvoyages like Lucians Te rue History, Swifts Gullivers ravels,Vernes AJourney to the Center of theEarth, or Henri MichauxsVoyage en Grande Garabagne, detective stories in both the genteelwhodunit and the hard-boiled Hammett-Chandler styles, fairytales (many of which are cautionary tales),debate poems like theanonymous medieval Te Owl and the Nightingale and Yeatss

a question from all sides meant that one was totally unfitted for action. Fanaticalenthusiasm was the mark of a real man, and to plot against an enemy behind his back

was perfectly legitimate self defence. . . . Tese parties were not formed to enjoy thebenefits of the established laws, but to acquire power by overthrowing the existingregime; and the members of these parties felt confidence in each other not becauseof any fellowship in a religious communion, but because they were partners in crime.If an opponent made a reasonable speech, the party in power, so far from giving ita generous reception, took every precaution to see that it had no practical effect

(PeloponnesianWar, ). Since Tucydides semi-fictional speeches present the ide-ology of the Greek city-states, this passage gives us a theory of political revolution;he is making the same point Orwell made in his essay Politics and the Englishlanguage. With almost religious belief in the truth-value of individual words andphrases, Orwell asserted that the present political chaos [at the end of the Second

World War] is connected with the decay of language, and . . . one can probably bringabout some improvement by starting at the verbal end. HomagetoCataloniaattacksthe press for causing this verbal corruption.

See Karel Capek, owards a Teory of Fairy ales, InPraiseofNewspapers,tr. M. and R. Weatherall (New York, ), .





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Dialogue of Self and Soul, complaints like Alain de Lilles De

PlanctuNaturaeand Allen Ginsbergs Howl (incongruous as thejuxtaposition may seem). All these and more, with one genre some-times merging into another, may be termed allegorical or partlyallegorical worksby which we mean primarily that as they goalong they are usually saying one thing in order to mean somethingbeyond that one thing. Tere is no reason why allegories shouldnot be written entirely in prose, entirely in verse, or in a mixtureof the two, as in the ConsolationofPhilosophy, a typical anatomy.

Tere is no reason why allegory must always be narrated; it canbe used in the drama, whether ancient (PrometheusBound), medi-eval (the moralities), Renaissance (the autossacramentalesand themasques), or modern (the surrealist drama of Ionesco or Beckett,the epic theatre of Brecht). Besides drama and narrative fiction,lyrical poetry is available to convey the extended metaphor, asfor example in certain Imagist poems (Pounds Papyrus,StevensTirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird),and more familiarlyin the conceits of Metaphysical verse, above all through its excesses(Clevelandism).

Tis variety is an advantage for the theorist, as well as a challenge,since he can be checked by many other readers, all of whom havespecial areas of interest and many of whom will have particular com-

Boethius ConsolationofPhilosophy, with its dialogue form, its verse interludesand its pervading tone of contemplative irony, is a pure anatomy, a fact of con-siderable importance for the understanding of its vast influence (Northrop Frye,

AnatomyofCriticism: Four Essays[Princeton, ], ). See Frye, , on the

genre in general.On the autosof Caldern, see FryesAnatomy, ; also A. L. Constandse,

LeBaroqueespagnoletCaldern de la Barca(Amsterdam, ),passim;A. A. Parker,TeAllegoricalDramaofCaldern(London, ); Ernst Curtius,EuropeanLiteratureandtheLatinMiddleAges, tr. W. R. rask (New York, ), , . Edwin Honighas especially interested himself in Caldern. See his article, Calderns StrangeMercy Play,MassachusettsReview, III (Autumn ), ; his translation of andintroduction to FourPlays(New York, ).

In Ezra Pound, Personae(New York, ), .Wallace Stevens, CollectedPoems(New York, ), .





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petence in genres the theorist can know only superficially. Fre-

quently we can refer a theory of allegory to works we read forentertainmentthe western romance, the imaginary voyage ofscience fiction, the melodrama based on fictional case historiesall of which are direct descendants of a more sober ancient tradi-tion. Te reader is often perhaps not aware that these works, mainlyromances, are at least partially allegorical. In the middle ages, we canguess, the priests homily did not strike his hearers as a blank, ab-stract, boring exordium, perhaps not even as particularly symbolic.

Te listeners, however, could return home from church to meditatesystematically on the hidden meaning of the parable, if they chose,and doubtless in times of plague and civil strife they did preciselythat. While allegory in the middle ages came to the people from thepulpit, it comes to the modern reader in secular, but no less popular,form. Te modern romance and the detective story with its solutionalso carry double meanings that are no less important to the comple-tion of their plots than is the moralitasto the preachers parable.

Te older iconographic languages of religious parable now needa good deal of interpretation,because their worlds are remote from

See G. R. Owst, Literature and Pulpit inMedievalEngland (Cambridge,), chs. i, ivvii. Te interpretation of Holy Writ was continually enlivenedby vivid illustration, lively anecdote, homely portraiture, witty and ruthless satire(). Satire, as in JosephAndrewsand ristramShandy, was later turned against thepurely routine publication of any and all sermons. With the sermons of Donneexegesis becomes a structural device for the development of dramatic, sometimeseven forensic, speech.

Besides the formal obscurity that inheres in enigma, there is also a historicalbarrier between modern and medieval contexts. Tus James Hastings, EncyclopediaofReligionandEthics(New York, ), I, b: Allegory is almost always a rela-tive, not an absolute conception, which has nothing to do with the actual truth ofthe matter, and for the most part springs from the natural desire to conserve someidea which, owing to its age, has come to be regarded as sacred. Also Roger Hinks,

MythandAllegoryinAncientArt(London, ), : It is the mark of allegorythat its dramatispersonaeare abstract concepts; they have no separate existence orlegend, such as the characters of myth enjoy; and as a rule they are created adhoc, tosuit a particular occasion. Te occasion gone, the symbolism loses its meaning. On





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our world, which would explain why medieval allegory seems so

obviously allegorical to us, while modern allegories (if I am rightin so extending the class) may not be read as fables. Te degree offamiliarity with the old and new iconographies is the varying fac-tor.Even though the twentieth-century reader has no actual expe-rience with detectives and murderers, he understands the world ofthe private eye, and the same holds for other kinds of stereotype.Te lack of a similar familiarity with medieval religious symbol-ism makes the modern reader think that what he reads for plea-

sure and what the preacher preached must be different in kind. Butthe whodunit demands a solution to a riddle, making it a memberof that oldest allegorical type, the aenigma.Te western of ZaneGrey has a different affinity: instead of the allegorical riddle, a sur-face texture of sublime scenic description is the carrier of thematicmeaning. Te western scenery in Grey is always more than a tacked-up backdrop. It is a paysage moralis, and Greys heroes act in

Christian and Philonic exegesis, see R. P. C. Hanson, AllegoryandEvent(London,), where the central subject is Origen; Grant, TeLetterand theSpirit;H. A.

Wolfson, TePhilosophyof theChurchFathers(Cambridge, Mass., ); Wolfson,Philo(Cambridge, Mass., ); Ppin, Mytheetallgorie; Jean Danilou, Philond

Alexandre(Paris, ). Tese are among the texts which have been useful to me; theliterature on the subject is of course extensive.

On the term iconography, see Erwin Panofsky, Iconography and Iconology:An Introduction to the Study of Renaissance Art, in Meaning in theVisualArts(New York, ), first published in StudiesinIconology: Humanistic Temes in the Artof the Renaissance(New York, ).

See W. H. Auden, Te Guilty Vicarage: Notes on the Detective Story, by anAddict, in TeCriticalPerformance, ed. S. E. Hyman (New York, ): Te interestin the thriller is the ethical and eristic conflict between good and evil, between Usand Tem. Te interest in the study of the murderer is the observation, by the in-nocent many, of the sufferings of the guilty one. Te interest in the detective story isthe dialectic of innocence and guilt (). Auden intends a slightly mocking tone.

Auden has a major poem to which he gave this title, PaysageMoralis, in TeCollectedPoetryofW. H. Auden(New York, ), . See the discussion of thispoem in J. W. Beachs ObsessiveImages: Symbolism in Poetry of the s and s(Minneapolis, ), .





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harmony with or in violent opposition to that scenic tapestry.Fur-

thermore, the conflicts of the cowboy hero and the bandit villain, asin the detective thriller, are drawn according to a dualism of goodand evila defining characteristic of the mode from the earliestperiod of Occidental literature. It is with fictions of this familiar,popular, unassuming sort that we can equip ourselves in determin-ing whether any particular theory of allegory is adequate. Whateverapplies to our favorite romances will apply with even greater forceto the major examples of tradition, let us say, TeFaerieQueeneand

TePilgrims Progress.An objection needs to be met here, namely that all romances arenot necessarily allegorical. A good adventure story, the reader willsay, needs no interpolated secondary meaning in order to be signifi-cant and entertaining. But that objection does not concern the truecriterion for allegory. Te whole point of allegory is that it does notneedto be read exegetically; it often has a literal level that makesgood enough sense all by itself. But somehow this literal surfacesuggests a peculiar doubleness of intention, and while it can, as itwere, get along without interpretation, it becomes much richer andmore interesting if given interpretation. Even the most deliberatefables, if read navely or carelessly, may seem mere stories, but whatcounts in our discussion is a structure that lends itself to a secondaryreading, or rather, one that becomes stronger when given a second-ary meaning as well as a primary meaning.

Nevertheless, we must avoid the notion that all people must see

BlackMesa, ch. ix: Te Desert of Bitter Seeps, all stone and baked earth, re-tained the heat into the fall. Each succeeding day grew drier, hotter, fiercer. . . . Paul,too, was wearing to a disastrous break. He realized it, but could not check the over-powering forces of the place, the time, and whatever terrible climax seemed immi-nent. . . . Belmont, too, was plotting. His deep and gloomy thought resembled thebrooding of the wasteland. Te subtle, almost imperceptible change of the last few

weeks now stood out palpably, Belmont was under a tremendous strain, the havoc ofwhich he did not suspect. His greed and lust and love of the bottle seemed to haveunited with the disintegrating influence of Bitter Seeps.





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the double meaning, for the work to be rightly called allegory. At

least one branch of allegory, the ironic aenigma, serves politicaland social purposes by the very fact that a reigning authority (as ina police state) does not see the secondary meaning of the Aesop-language.But someone does see that meaning, and, once seen, itis felt strongly to be the final intention behind the primary mean-ing. Perhaps nave readers do not see the erotic allegory under thesurface action of a Zane Grey romance, but then in discussing al-legory we are not much concerned with nave readers. We are talking

about sophisticated readers and what they read intoliterature. Tereis on the other hand no harm in admitting that stories can movethe reader by sheer plot, action, and surprise. But these stories aremuch rarer than one would expect. It is commoner to find a veneerof action laid over a moralizing intent. Finally, whether one thinksthere is such a thing as pure storytelling, or only degrees of abstractthematic structure (Aristotles dianoia) underlying every fiction, themain point is surely that in discussing literature generally we mustbe ready to discern in almost any work at least a small degree ofallegory. All literature, as Northrop Frye has observed, is from thepoint of view of commentary more or less allegorical, while no pureallegory will ever be found.Tere is therefore no harm in draw-

Henry Peacham, TeGardenofEloquence(London, ; reprinted Gainesville,Fla., ): Aenigma: a kind of Allegorie, differing only in obscuritie, for Aenigmais a sentence or forme of speech, which for the darknesse, the sense may hardly begathered (). Tis figure is usually identified with riddle, e.g., George Puttenham,TeArteofEnglish Poesie, ed. Gladys Willcock and Alice Walker (London, ;

reprinted Cambridge, ): We dissemble againe under covert and darke speaches,when we speake by way of riddle (Enigma) of which the sence can hardly be pickedout, but by the parties owne assoile (). See below, chapter , on the political usesof allegory.

See Alan Patons article Te South African reason rial, AtlanticMonthly,CCV ( Jan. ); also, more general, E. S. Hobsbawm, SocialBanditsandPrimitiveRebels(Glencoe, Ill., ), ch. ix, Ritual in Social Movements.

For dramatic proof that commentary, especially when carried to an ex-treme, is perforce allegorical we have nothing better than certain parodies,e.g., Teodore Spencers new critical reading of Tirty Days Hath Sep-





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ing instances from borderline cases. Even Te Divine Comedy,

which most readers would assume to be the greatest Western ex-ample of allegory, seemed to Coleridge, and has more recently been

tember (NewRepublic, Dec. , ). Spencer showed that the New Criticism, whileit attacked allegory in theory, still used the mode in practice, by conscientiously over-reading the text.

Equally revealing are some entries in a Churchimescontest for absurdly seriousinterpretations. Te contest was entitled Hidden Meaning. Te readings were to

be based on the childrens stories of Beatrix Potter. I give five of these parodies, inpart or in full.On Beatrix Potters ale ofJohnny ownMouse: Te resignation of both the

principals to their own lot, and their half-hearted sampling of each others, mark thisas a sharp study in organized social frustration, of the little man subject to giganticand compulsive forces. Consider the hamper. . . . Te little man may choose to moveby it from one pattern of frustration to another: by boarding it he voteshere wemay note that the hamper goes to the country: thereafter he is the prisoner of hisdecision, taking no part in shaping events until the next arbitrary decision to sendthe hamper to him. . . .

Another Beatrix Potter fable for children, concerning Jeremy Fisher, is called

a deeply mystical allegory which, reduced to its simplest terms, resolves itself intoan arresting tract against reliance upon the material. Te dominant motif concernsobsession with a physical element, and for Freudians it is significant that this recallsthe environment of the embryo.

An even more scholastic reading was made of TealeofMr. Jeremy Fisher:Itreflects sadly on modern scholarship that the true anthropological significance ofthis work should not have been more widely recognized. o those attuned to theovertones of narrative, this is clearly yet another restatement of the myth of theFisher King, whose immolation and subsequent rebirth restores fertility to an oth-erwise waste land; the processes of sacrifice and renewal being here represented byingestion and regurgitation.

In the close web of allusion and cultural cross-reference that forms the fabric ofthe text, the names even of the guests at the final dinner (a thinly-disguised vegeta-tion ceremony) have deep symbolic significance. Sir Isaac Newton sets the myth in itsproper context of the space-time continuum; while Mr. Alderman Ptolemy ortoise,in his predilection for salad, is a clear link with Ancient Egyptian fertility rites.

Serious students would do well to consult the recently published DerWeltschmerz und die Frau Potter, by Professor Ludwig Schwartz-Metterklume(Leipzig: ). . . .

On Te ale of Jemima Puddle-Duck: Te focal point in Te ale ofJemima Puddle-Duck is the Woodshed, which, as all psychologists know, is





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shown by Auerbach, to be a quasi- allegorical work.With such a

major example in mind one cannot help wondering if borderlinecases are not going to be the norm.

the universally accepted symbol of the Fascination of Evil. With a few deft strokes

the authoress sets the scene, and almost at once the dreadful Woodshed begins toexert its magnetic spell. Te Primrose Path, while not directly mentioned in the text,is delicately suggested in the superb illustrations. Half unaware, the heroine is drawnonward at an accelerating pace, which develops from an initial waddle, through arun, into precipitate flight. Tis is true insight.

So much for the dynamic angle. From the static angle, the approach to theWoodshed is handled with equal mastery. Always by the Woodshed is the Fox(Deception, the invariable concomitant of Evil), and concealing the Fox are thebeautiful Fox-gloves. As the Bard said, O, what a goodly outside Falsehood hath!

On TealeofPeterRabbit:Tis poignant allegory pinpoints the tragic dilemmaof adolescence. Youth emerges from its safe childhood (the underground burrow)

to choose between dull respectability and the mysterious forbidden territory, theunlawful El DoradoMr. McGregors garden!

By a brilliant stroke Miss Potter epitomises her heros descent into crime, as hesqueezes underthe gate. At first the rewards come easily, and lettuce-gorged Youthsheds his inhibitions (coat and shoes), until he comes face to face with his great Foe,the destroyer of his father and the enemy of all his tribe.

Dramatically the atmosphere changes. Te fatal Garden, easy to enter, is hard toescape from. An undercurrent of sadism suggested earlier in the sinister made into apie, becomes explicit in the terrors of the rake, the sieve and the waiting cat.

While certainly not light reading, this grim book with its ruthless message canbe recommended to readers over twenty-one.

Coleridge, MiscellaneousCriticism, ed. . M. Raysor (London, ), : TeDivina Commedia is a system of moral, political, and theological truths, with ar-bitrary personal exemplifications, which are not, in my opinion, allegorical. I donot even feel convinced that the punishments in the Inferno are strictly allegorical.I rather take them to have been in Dantes mind quasi-allegorical, or conceivedin analogy to pure allegory. Te Miscellaneous Criticism is sprinkled with com-mentary on the nature of allegory, not only with respect to major allegorists likeBunyan, Dante, and Spenser, but also with borderline authors like Rabelais, Sterne,and Defoe. Coleridges quasi-allegorical reading is confirmed by Erich Auerbach,Dante: Poet of the Secular World, tr. Ralph Manheim (Chicago, ).





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Besides the scope of the literature involved, certain areas of criti-

cal disagreement may be mentioned, because they suggest the maintrouble we have to contend with: our psychological and linguisticuncertainty as to what is going on when language is used figura-tively. Figurative language is not understood at the present time inany final way. Te tortuous subtlety of William Empson and Ken-neth Burke, both of them major critics, suggests that no simple for-mulas are possible, given our limited knowledge of the psychologyof speech.erms like tenor and vehicle have been helpful, but

are only labels.

I. A. Richards recent interest in communicationtheory and in scientific pedagogy has not carried his revolutionarynotions of metaphor much beyond the earlier position reached inPracticalCriticismand TePhilosophyofRhetoric. Another importanttreatise, Rosemond uves Elizabethan andMetaphysicalImagery,gave the study of rhetoric a close historical analysis, but in spite ofreferences to certain modern poets, uve remained essentially con-cerned with a single period, the Renaissance.In his FearfulSymme-tryNorthrop Frye displayed what may be the most brilliant exerciseof allegorical interpretation on record, but about this particular

Empson would place allegory in his third type, in Seven ypes ofAmbiguity(London, ; reprinted New York, ). Kenneth Burkes discussions of allegoryare mainly concerned with its political uses, e.g., in Part III of ARhetoricofMotives(New York, ), entitled Order. Like Empson, Burke is interested in symbolic

action as a means of coping with social and political tensions.enor and vehicle were introduced by I. A. Richards in his lectures, Te

Philosophy of Rhetoric (London, ). See his recent Speculative Instruments(Chicago, ), for examples of his interest in pedagogic, communication problems(translation, for example). See Max Black on Richards erminology: Models and

Metaphors: Studies in Language and Philosophy(Ithaca, ), ch. iii, Metaphor.Miss uves casus belliwas the misunderstanding in twentieth-century criti-

cism of the rhetorical techniques presupposed by poets like Donne, Drayton, andHerbert. Her chief object of study was Renaissance Poetics, revealed in both thetheory and practice of the Elizabethan and Jacobean period.





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procedure his theoretical views were not, I think, greatly advanced

in the even more remarkable Anatomy of Criticism. Tere Fryeobserved that allegory is a type of thematic counterpoint, encoun-tered most often in romances, and that a high degree of thematiccontent in any piece of literature probably implies allegorical tech-niques at work.Given this rather broad conception of the term,theory would have been left in an impressionist stage, had not EdwinHonigs general treatise, DarkConceit, laid down some of the majorlines of inquiry.Tis book is to my knowledge the pioneer work on

the subject in modern times. My own disagreements with it are amatter of some detail, and where they are large-scale disagreements,I prefer to leave them to a more objective comparison than my own.I had the pleasure of attending Mr. Honigs lectures on the subjectof allegory given during the evolution of Dark Conceit, and I wasdoubtless influenced by them in ways that I cannot now see. Honigsbook seems to me to be concerned chiefly with accounting for thecreative aspects of allegory. Honig wants to show how allegorycomes into being, what are the cultural determinants fromwithout.My own approach, despite the chapter I devote to the psycho-

Frye, on allegory: FearfulSymmetry: A Study of William Blake(Princeton, ), and the final chapter, Te Valley of Vision; also AnatomyofCriticism, ; Te ypology of ParadiseRegained,ModernPhilology, LIII, ; Notes fora Commentary onMilton, in TeDivineVision, ed. V. de Sola Pinto (London, ).

Frye, Anatomy, . Te summary treatment of the whole range of allegory,pp. , is a marvel of compactness, and perhaps therefore criticism is unfair.

Honig, DarkConceit: Te Making of Allegory(Evanston, ). I have been un-able to consult Abraham Bezankis, An Introduction to the Problem of Allegoryin Literary Criticism (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Michigan, ). Amongbriefer general accounts, see Te Allegorical Method, in Rex Warner, Te Cultof Power (London, ); Edward Bloom, Te Allegorical Principle, Journal of

EnglishLiteraryHistory(hereafter abbreviated asELH ), XVIII (), . C. S.Lewis devotes a chapter to this general subject in TeAllegoryofLove(Oxford, ),, where he emphasizes the psychomachia. Lewis is himself the author of sev-eral fables, TatHideousStrength, Perelandra, Out of the Silent Planet, Te ScrewtapeLetters, Te Chronicles of Narcion.





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analytic theory of allegory, is less genetic, and more formal. I am not

so much concerned with individual authors or individual periods aswith the form that any given allegory will be likely to present to asophisticated reader, regardless of the ways by which it came intobeing. In that sense I am attempting an account rather unlike DarkConceit.

While there is still need for an analysis of the figurative nature ofallegory in rhetorical terms, there are certain special historical con-fusions that can be avoided if we formulate a theory cutting across

historical lines. Te first of these is the controversy over the dif-ference between allegory and symbol. Tis unhappy controversy,which begins with Goethes distinction between the two terms, hashad its fair share of critical attention.It is a primarily historicalmatter, since it concerns romantic conceptions of the mind, andof imagination in particular. Te psychology of the imaginationwould have to be dealt with in any full historical treatment of thedevelopment of allegorical literature. Goethes concern with theallegory-symbol distinction has especial value in the light of hisevolving attitudes toward the Faust legend, and yet, though suchorigins of modern critical theory have historical interest, they ratherlead us to reconsider the means we shall take to describe allegoryfor present-day students of literature. As critics, we of the twentiethcentury come out of a climate, well described by M. H. Abrams inTeMirrorandtheLamp, in which there is a gradual sophisticationof the psychological part of critical theory.We live in an age of

Ren Wellek, AHistoryofModernCriticism (New Haven, ), I, ; alsoHonig, DarkConceit, . Goethe,Maximen, as tr. by Wellek (I, ), says: Tereis a great difference, whether the poet seeks the particular for the general or sees thegeneral in the particular. From the first procedure arises allegory, where the particularserves only as an example of the general; the second procedure, however, is really thenature of poetry: it expresses something particular, without thinking of the generalor pointing to it.

rue symbolism is where the particular represents the more general, not as adream or a symbol, but as a living momentary revelation ot the Inscrutable.

With the development of psychology into the fields of Gestalt, behavior-ist, and psychoanalytic theory, the concept of imagination has been overlaid by





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psychological and psychoanalytic speculation, and we need to re-

turn periodically to earlier stages of that speculation, where perhapswe can find the starting point for both our more profitable and ourmore dubious explorings. Perhaps a closer attention to the historyof nineteenth-century criticism would prevent unfortunate over-simplifications such as are likely when we speak loosely of conceptslike the romantic imagination or the symbolisme of the Frenchpoets. Te word symbol in particular has become a banner for con-fusion, since it lends itself to a falsely evaluative function whenever

it is used to mean good (symbolic) poetry as opposed to bad(allegorical) poetry, and in this way it clouds distinctions that arealready difficult enough to make.

Te same objection against a leveling critical language may bemade against a more recent tendency to praise myth at the ex-pense of allegory. Tus, a critic may say of TeCastleor Terialor TeMetamorphosis that they are mythic, and then proceed toread them, perhaps employing Freudian symbols, as the purest sortof allegory. Te basis of myth criticism is a search for certain re-current archetypal patterns (e.g., the dragon-slaying myth) at theheart of stories which would present a more complex appearance toanother critic who did not think in terms of archetypes.Te arche-

complicating factors. I. A. Richards is the chief theorist to follow Coleridgean leads;M. H. Abrams TeMirrorandtheLamp: Romantic Teory and the Critical radition(New York, ) is chiefly historical.

See W. K. Wimsatt and Cleanth Brooks, Literary Criticism: A Short History(New York, ). Tere is to be a chapter on myth criticism in Welleks forth-

coming sequel to Volume II of his AHistoryofModern Criticism. Te major in-fluence on these critics is Carl Jung, whose theory of archetypes may be foundsummarized in Jolande Jacobi, Complex /Archetype /Symbol, tr. Ralph Manheim(New York, ). ypical Jungian studies are Jung, Te Archetypes of theCollective Unconscious, in Collected Works, IX (New York, ); TeParadigm of the Unicorn, ibid., XII; with Karl Kerenyi, Essays on a Science of

Mythology, tr. R.F.C. Hull (New York, ). Also, Erich Neumann, Te GreatMother: An Analysis of the Archetype(New York, ), and TeOriginsandHistoryofConsciousness(New York, ); Joseph Campbell, TeHerowithaTousandFaces(New York, ). Tese works lean away from literary criticism, toward anthro-





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typal pattern is the form in which the deepest psychic significance of

the heros or heroines action is expressed. Probably such irreduciblepatterns are present in storytelling of all kinds.But a curious de-velopment takes place in myth criticism. What began as unpreju-diced description in terms of archetypes becomes a valuation of onlythose works where the archetypes are clearly discernible. When thecritic uses the word mythic to describe Kafka or Faulkner, we needto be sure it is not a covert term of praise. It seems to be descriptive,but in fact it often evaluates. Te term myth, when used in this

way, seems to be the heir of symbol in the older controversy overallegory and symbol. It has simply become richer in connotations,owing to its significance for cultural anthropology. What was local-ized in time and space as a pregnant moment, under the Goetheanrubric of Symbol, may now be universalized as a manifestation of asupposed collective unconscious. We have indeed to go back onestage before the advent of Myth on the critical scene.

Coleridge makes a natural starting point for an analysis of al-legorical practice, since he is at the center of the disputation whichhas so obscured the problem.

For Coleridge the definition of allegory was an important matterbecause it allowed him once again to make the distinction betweenorganic and mechanic form,and to provide a major instance

pology. hey tend to collapse literary distinctions, but are extremely sug-gestive for the study of allegory as well as myth. Less psychoanalytic, moreclearly literary in emphasis is Maud Bodkins ArchetypalPatterns in Poetry:Psychological Studies of Imagination (London, ; reprinted New York,

).See Myth: A Symposium, ed. . A. Seboek (Bloomington, ), chapters by

Claude Lvi-Strauss, Lord Raglan, Stanley Edgar Hyman, and Stith Tompson,on mythic patterns. Also the pioneer work of Lord Raglan, heHero(London,; reprinted New York, ); and Vladimir Propp, heMorphology of theFolktale, ed. Svatava Pirkova-Jacobson, tr. Laurence Scott (Bloomington, ).

Te latter is a classic of Russian formalist criticism.Coleridge, Lectures on Shakespeare, Recapitulation, and Summary of

the Characteristics of Shakespeares Dramas, in S. . Coleridge, Essays andLectures on Shakespeare and Some Other Old Poets and Dramatists (Everyman





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of literature created out of a compromising relationship between the

imagination and the logical powers of reason. Such a compro-mise could not give rise to the highest art, but it was precisely whatwas required for that mixture of theme and image we call allegory.Coleridge made his criticism of allegory implicit in his distinctionbetween symbol and allegory, as well as in his definition of allegory.o take the distinction first:

Te Symbolical cannot perhaps be better defined in distinction

from the Allegorical, than that it is always itself a part of that, of

the whole of which it is representative.Here comes a sail,(that is a ship) is a symbolical expression. Behold our lion!

when we speak of some gallant soldier, is allegorical. Of most

ed., London, ), : Te form is mechanic, when on any given material we im-press a pre-determined form, not necessarily arising out of the properties of thematerial;as when to a mass of wet clay we give whatever shape we wish it toretain when hardened. Te organic form, on the other hand, is innate; it shapes, as itdevelops, itself from within, and the fulness of its development is one and the same

with the perfection of its outward form. Such as the life is, such is the form. WhatColeridge says of mechanic form is also implied by the theory of figuraand impresa.Erich Auerbach, Figura, in ScenesfromtheDramaofEuropeanLiterature: Six Essays(New York, ), : It should be borne in mind that Varro, like all Latin authors

who were not specialists in philosophy endowed with an exact terminology, usedfig-uraandformainterchangeably, in the general sense of form. Strictly speaking,formameant mold, French moule, and was related to figura as the hollow form to theplastic shape that issues from it. On impresa, see Mario Praz, StudiesinSeventeenthCenturyImagery(London, ), I, ch. i, Emblem, Device, Epigram, Conceit, andthe Appendix, Emblems and Devices in Literature.

Now an allegory is but a translation of abstract notions into a picture-

language, which is itself nothing but an abstraction from objects of the senses; theprincipal being more worthless even than its phantom proxy, both alike unsubstan-tial, and the former shapeless to boot. On the other hand a symbol . . . is character-ized by a translucence of the special in the individual, or of the general in the special,or of the universal in the general; above all by the translucence of the eternal throughand in the temporal. It always partakes of the reality which it renders intelligible;and while it enunciates the whole, abides itself as a living part in that unity of whichit is the representative. Te other are but empty echoes which the fancy arbitrarilyassociates with apparitions of matter, less beautiful but not less shadowy than thesloping orchard or hill- side pasture seen in the transparent lake below (Coleridge,TeStatesman,s Manual, ed. W. G. . Shedd [New York, ], ).





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importance to our present subject is this point, that the latter

(allegory) cannot be other than spoken consciously;whereasin the former (the symbol) it is very possible that the general

truth may be unconsciously in the writers mind during the con-

struction of the symbol; and it proves itself by being produced

out of his own mind,as the Don Quixote out of the perfectly

sane mind of Cervantes, and not by outward observation or his-

torically. Te advantage of symbolic writing over allegory is, that

it presumes no disjunction of faculties, but simple dominance.

By identifying Symbol with synecdoche, Coleridge is assum-ing a sort of participation mystique of the Symbol with the ideasymbolized. Te Symbol is furthermore given directly in the act of per-ceiving the ship. With Symbol the mind perceives the rational order of

Misc. Crit., . Coleridge here echoes the Goethean maxim: rue symbolismis where the particular represents the more general, not as a dream or a shadow,but as a living momentary revelation of the Inscrutable (quoted by Wellek, History,I, ). Coleridge likewise follows the Goethean distinction between allegory and

symbol: Allegory changes a phenomenon into a concept, a concept into an image,but in such a way that the concept is still limited and completely kept and held inthe image and expressed by it (whereas symbolism) changes the phenomenon intothe idea, the idea into the Image, in such a way that the idea remains always infi-nitely active and unapproachable in the image, and will remain inexpressible eventhough expressed in all languages. Te final point here made is that allegory is akind of translatable jargon, whereas symbol is a universal language impervious tolocal limitations. One cannot, in Goethes sense, translate the Cross, since by itselfthis symbol is supralinguistic.

Te term, now somewhat questioned by anthropologists, is Lvy-Bruhls. Seehis L Ame primitive(Paris, ); also his LesFonctionsmentalesdanslessocits in-

frieures(Paris, ). Johan Huizinga, TeWaningoftheMiddleAges, tr. F. Hopman(New York, ), : All realism, in the medieval sense, leads to anthropomor-phism. Having attributed a real existence to an idea, the mind wants to see thisidea alive, and can only effect this by personifying it. In this way allegory is born. Itis not the same thing as symbolism. Symbolism expresses a mysterious connectionbetween two ideas, allegory gives a visible form to the conception of such a connec-tion. Symbolism is a very profound function of the mind, allegory is a superficialone. It aids symbolic thought to express itself, but endangers it at the same time bysubstituting a figure for a living idea. Te force of the symbol is easily lost in theallegory. So allegory in itself implies from the outset normalizing, projecting on a

surface, crystallizing.





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things directly, by an unmediated vision,without any logical extrapo-

lation from the phenomena of our material world, whereas in allegorythere is always (as Coleridge sees it) an attempt to categorize logicalorders first, and fit them to convenient phenomena second, to set forthideal systems first, and illustrate them second. Tis latter Platonic idea-image relationship can exist only when one is conscious of the philo-sophic status of the ideas one is conceiving. One need not necessarily beaware of ones own private motives in constructing such ideal systems,but one does need to have a conscious, highly organized view of the

interrelationships that bind the system into a unity. Coleridge empha-sized the unconsciousness of the Symbolic process in a way that temptsa Freudian reinterpretation of his view.Without actually saying thatSymbol is an expression of the Freudian Unconsciousand thereforeequivalent to dream symbolwe could speculate about Coleridges ideaof the disjunction of the faculties, since in allegory there is clearly adisjunction of meanings.Allegoriamanifestly has two or more levels ofmeaning, and the apprehension of these must require at least two at-titudes of mind. When, for example, one witnessed a court masque withdecor by Inigo Jones, one no doubt lavished considerable attention onthe mere ornament of the play, on the costumes, the decor, the dancing,the music, and so on, and to shift from this kind of sensuous world to theworld of ideas must have engaged a secondary train of thought. YetColeridgean theory goes only so far, and modern approaches will even-tually replace it. Whether duplicity of meaning in all allegory followsnecessarily from a splitting of reasonand imaginationis not a questionthat modern psychology would pose in Coleridgean terms.

However, Coleridge defined allegory in such a way as to makepossible a double approach, a double attention to the surface of

See Geoffrey Hartman, TeUnmediatedVision: An Interpretation of Wordsworth,Hopkins, Rilke and Valry(New Haven, ).

M. H. Abrams has shown striking anticipations of Freud in both Hazlitt andJohn Keble. He quotes Hazlitt: Te imagination, by thus embodying and turningthem to shape, gives an obvious relief to the indistinct and importunate cravings ofthe will (MirrorandtheLamp, ).





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works and to their psychic effects and significance, by a rigid adher-

ence to both psychological and rhetorical theories.We may then safely define allegorical writing as the employ-

ment of one set of agents and images with actions and accom-

paniments correspondent, so as to convey, while in disguise,

either moral qualities or conceptions of the mind that are not

in themselves objects of the senses, or other images, agents,

actions, fortunes, and circumstances so that the difference is

everywhere presented to the eye or imagination, while the like-

ness is suggested to the mind; and this connectedly, so that theparts combine to form a consistent whole.

Although in every case the terms are elaborated, and sometimesredefined, each chapter of the following discussion is devoted to amajor element mentioned in this definition. Chapter considersthe central focus of narrative and drama, their agents, the peoplethey show in movement. Chapter considers the textural aspect ofallegory, its tapestried surface of images. Te vocabulary employedin these and subsequent chapters comes from various sources. Tenotion of the agent as daemon comes from comparative religionand from the history of Christianity. (Frye has recently writtenof daemonic agency in his Anatomy of Criticism.)Te notion of

Coleridge,Misc. Crit., . We have on record two statements of this definition,the one quoted and another which accounts less well for the presumed mechanicaleffect of allegory, since it reverses the functions of mind and imagination (with a

likeness to the imagination but with a difference to the understanding).On Defoes fabulous, daemonic style, see Coleridge, Misc. Crit., . Coleridge

regarded both GargantuaandPantagrueland ristramShandyas partially if not mainlyallegorical (All Rabelais personages are phantasmagoric allegories, but Panurge aboveall). He saw a tendency of certain narratives to become less allegorical as their agentsbecame too strongly individualized. Tis is often felt in the Pilgrims Progress wherethe characters are real persons with nick names (Misc. Crit., ).

See Frye,Anatomy, , on demonic imagery. Frye takes demonic in itsstandard, late-Christian sense of diabolic. I prefer a neutral definition, to includeangelic powers





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kosmos, used for the allegorical image, does not come from the his-

tory of science, but from ancient rhetoric; I have tried to restore itsoriginal, very useful meaning. Te term has not been much used forpractical criticism, but it would form a bridge between anthropology(e.g., Mircea Eliade) and criticism (the New Critics or the historicalscholarship of Rosemond uve). Chapter considers action underthe aspect of ritual, a concept validated chiefly in comparative reli-gion and, rather differently, in psychoanalysis. Both views of ritualare relevant, and are employed. Further, ritual as a term for a sym-

bolic action has become established in the criticism of KennethBurke. Since all stories are unified on some basis of probability ornecessity, that is, according to some type of causal system, chap-ter takes up this problem and employs the Frazerian anthropologi-cal concept of contagious and sympathetic magic to explain the caus-al sequences underlying events in allegories. Finally, to describe thethematic dualism of levels that Coleridge referred to as a disguise,chapter invokes the psychoanalytic concept of ambivalence. Butto approach this concept more easily I have related the disjunc-tion of the faculties to that conflict of mind which Schiller andKant found inherent in the sublime. Chapter uses psychoanalytictheory to show the mental basis of allegory. Chapter broaches theultimate problem of aesthetic value and suggests both the limita-tions and the advantages of the mode. It shows how allegorists flexan inherently rigid control of intention, how by means of irony anddigressive commentary they alleviate the burden of pure ritual, andwe get what might be called a good literature.

Te terms of my description may suggest that allegory is closelyidentified with religious ritual and symbolism. Tis is not an acci-dent. As C. S. Lewis has remarked, it would appear that all allegorieswhatever are likely to seem Catholic to the general reader, and thisphenomenon is worth investigation.Precisely this investigation

AllegoryofLove, . My subsequent argument will show precisely why thisis so, on the grounds that allegory makes an excess of a behavior frequent enough





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has been one of my aims. Even without taking a psychoanalytic

view, one can show the truth of Lewis assertion; but psycho-analysis gives a strong reinforcement to it, in that we can showthe close similarity between allegorical forms and so-called com-pulsive rituals, and these rituals in turn are analogues to reli-gious rituals. Te various analogies that can be drawn betweenreligious, literary, and psychoanalytically observed phenomena allpoint to the oldest idea about allegory, that it is a human recon-stitution of divinely inspired messages, a revealed transcenden-

tal language which tries to preserve the remoteness of a properlyveiled godhead.o reach this traditional conclusion, however, anonmetaphysical line of argument seems the best initial course,and that is the course I have followed. I have stayed away fromthe metaphysics of the subject. I have also stayed away from thehistory and theory of biblical exegesis because, in the words ofa friend, Biblical exegesis has as its aim and basis of argumentthe historical and theological defense of the Bible as the revealedword of Godin other words, a concern that is tangential to thescope of the present investigation. Tis is not to say that tradi-tional readings of the prophetic books of the Old estament andof the Book of Revelation are not relevant to the study of poems

in Catholic piety: When Catholicism goes bad it becomes the world-old, world-wide religioof amulets and holy places and priestcraft (Lewis,Allegory, ).

See below, Chapter , passim.Te intermediaries in this process of divine revelation were spirits, the good

and bad daemons who led or misledSir Tomas Browne, ReligioMedici, ed. J. J.

Denonain (Cambridge, ), sec. , : I doe thinke that many mysteries ascribedto our owne inventions have beene the courteous revelations of Spirits; for thosenoble essences in heaven beare a friendly regard unto their fellow natures on earth;and therefore beleeve that those many prodigies and ominous prognostickes, whichforerun the ruines of States, Princes, and private persons, are the charitable premoni-tions of good Angels, which more carelesse enquiries terme but the effects of chanceand nature. On the doctrine of inspiration, see also R.P.C. Hanson, Allegoryand

Event(London, ), ch. vii; also, H. W. Robinson,InspirationandRevelationintheOldestament(Oxford, ), ; John Skinner, ProphecyandReligion: Studiesin the Life of Jeremiah(; reprinted Cambridge, ), ch. x.





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like heDivineComedyor PiersPlowmanor heFaerieQueene;

indeed the conclusion of my remarks on value and function willdwell on the apocalyptic, visionary moments into which mere alle-gory sometimes emerges. Te reader may, however, ask how oftenthis emergence occurs. When an allegory becomes purely vision-ary, when for example hePilgrims Progressshows us the Heav-enly City, it does so aftera struggle to reach that goal. Te stageprior to final vision seems to be qualitatively unlike that final vision;the latter is a moment of liberation. Te former is a sequence of

difficult labors, often taking the form of the heros enslavement toa fatal destiny. Tepsychomachiaand the progress are narrative im-ages of this struggle. Tey are battles for, and journeys toward, thefinal liberation of the hero. If a temporary liberation occurs alongthe way, it is but the precursor of one final victory. If the poetwishes to show evil triumphing, he can take a totally ironic atti-tude toward good and evil; if the hero is a Jonathan Wild, he alsojourneys toward an apocalypse, but of death instead of rebirth.

Considered also as a nonmetaphysical semantic device, whetherleading to apocalypse or not, allegory likewise appears to expressconflict between rival authorities, as in times of political oppres-sion we may get Aesop-language to avoid censorship of dissidentthought. At the heart of any allegory will be found this conflict ofauthorities. One ideal will be pitted against another, its opposite:thus the familiar propagandist function of the mode, thus the con-servative satirical function, thus the didactic function. Te modeis hierarchical in essence, owing not only to its use of traditional

Bishop Hurd, whose criticism of Spenser attempts to justify his Gothicforms, is also author of AnIntroductiontotheStudyofthePropheciesconcerningtheChristianChurch, and, in Particular, concerning the Church of Papal Rome, in welveSermons(d ed., London, ). Tis series of sermons not only sets forth the theo-logical presumptions on which true prophecy is based, but in Sermons IXXI givesa description of the prophetic style. Here, as with Spenserian criticism, Hurd is asomewhat romantic theorist, in that his remarks would sanction authors like Blake,

Young, and Shelley.





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imageries which are arranged in systems of correspondences, but

furthermore because all hierarchies imply a chain of command, oforderin the secondary sense that is meant when we say the gen-eral orderedhis officers to command their subordinates. Hierarchyis never simply a system giving people their proper place; it goesfurther and tells them what their legitimatepowersare. Any hierar-chy is bound to elicit sharp emotive responses toward these powers.We are therefore able to describe the mode from a dynamic point ofview. Allegories are far less often the dull systems that they are re-

puted to be than they are symbolic power struggles. If they are oftenrigid, muscle-bound structures, that follows from their involvementwith authoritarian conflict. If they are abstract, harsh, mechanistic,and remote from everyday life, that may sometimes answer a genu-ine need. When a people is being lulled into inaction by the routineof daily life, so as to forget all higher aspirations, an author perhapsdoes well to present behavior in a grotesque, abstract caricature. Insuch a way he may arouse a general self- criticism, and the methodwill be justified.

Both this satirical criticism and the apocalyptical escape into aninfinite space and time tend toward high human goals. In both casesallegory is serving major social and spiritual needs. When we addto these the functions of education (the didactic strain) and enter-tainment (the riddling or romantic strains), we have a modality ofsymbolism which we must respect. Allegory, as I have tried to defineit, seems to be a many-sided phenomenon. Its overall purposes arecapable of many minor variations. I have tried to bring out these

overall purposes, yet without damaging the minor subtleties. Whatfollows is therefore in the nature of a mapping expedition, for whichI have, in my notes, kept a running journal or sketchbook of thedays events. Te notes are not absolutely necessary to the overallmap, but they will, I hope, usefully complement it with referencesto old and new scholarly works.




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