Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Dedication
- Preface
- Part I ‘Allegorical Devices’
- 1 ‘To direct your understanding’: Allegory, or ‘Authoritative’ Commentary
- 2 ‘This and That’: The Experience of Allegory
- 3 Allegorical Characters
- Part II Self-Interpretation in the Legend of Holiness
- Part III The problem of Self-interpretation in Later Books
- Conclusion: The Mutability Cantos and the Limits of Self-Interpretation
- Bibliography
- Index
- Studies in Renaissance Literature
3 - Allegorical Characters
from Part I - ‘Allegorical Devices’
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 September 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Dedication
- Preface
- Part I ‘Allegorical Devices’
- 1 ‘To direct your understanding’: Allegory, or ‘Authoritative’ Commentary
- 2 ‘This and That’: The Experience of Allegory
- 3 Allegorical Characters
- Part II Self-Interpretation in the Legend of Holiness
- Part III The problem of Self-interpretation in Later Books
- Conclusion: The Mutability Cantos and the Limits of Self-Interpretation
- Bibliography
- Index
- Studies in Renaissance Literature
Summary
Personification
TWENTIETH-CENTURY criticism of allegorical literature placed extraordinary emphasis on the discussion of allegorical characters, and more particularly on a kind of character called the ‘personification’. Very frequently, personification was treated as the defining device, if not of the whole of allegorical literature, at least of its most common species; and that species, often called “personification allegory”, was presumed (like the “this for that” allegory with which it was effectively identified) to comprise all but a few truly exceptional allegorical works, notably Dante's Comedy. But such preeminence of personification in the conception of allegorical literature is, analytically as well as historically, something of a peculiarity. In analytical terms, it is not obvious why the figurative use of characters, let alone a particular kind of figurative use of characters, should be seen as a more essential feature of allegorical composition than, for example, that of places (Vanity Fair, the Bower of Bliss) or objects (the shield of faith, the burden on Christian's back). Historically, meanwhile, almost all the works typically cited as evident cases of “personification allegory” (amongst them Psychomachia, The Romance of the Rose, Piers Plowman, Everyman, and at least in some episodes The Faerie Queene) predate by centuries the emergence of personification as the predominant concern in discussions of allegory.
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- Information
- Self-Interpretation in 'The Faerie Queene' , pp. 39 - 54Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2006