On Allegory

On Allegory: Some Medieval Aspects and Approaches (with an Introduction by Eric Stanley and an Afterword by Vincent Gillespie)

Edited by

Mary Carr, K.P. Clarke and Marco Nievergelt

Cambridge Scholars Publishing

On Allegory: Some Medieval Aspects and Approaches (with an Introduction by Eric Stanley and an Afterword by Vincent Gillespie), Edited by Mary Carr, K.P. Clarke and Marco Nievergelt This book first published 2008 by Cambridge Scholars Publishing 15 Angerton Gardens, Newcastle, NE5 2JA, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright 2008 by Mary Carr, K.P. Clarke and Marco Nievergelt and contributors All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-84718-400-6, ISBN (13): 9781847184009

Hans Memling, Die sieben Freuden Mariens, Oil on Wood, 81.3 X 19.2 cm, Munich, Staatsgemldesammlungen, Inv. Nr. WAF 668. Reproduced with Permission.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Preface ........................................................................................................ ix Introduction Allegory Through the Ages, As Read Mainly in England and As Seen Anywhere .................................................................................................... 1 E. G. Stanley Allegories of Faith The Persistence of Narrative: An Exploration of Hans Memling's The Seven Joys of the Virgin...................................................................... 28 Meredith Bacola The Picture of Christ Crucified: Luthern Influence on Donne's Religious Imagery ..................................................................................... 42 Kirsten Stirling Allegory and the Self Personification and abstractio in Boethius Consolation of Philosophy...... 56 Olga Malinovskaya Sum newe thing: Autobiography, Allegory and Authority in the Kingis Quair .................................................................................... 70 Darragh Greene Allegory and Place The Allegory of Landscape: Land Reclamation and Defence at Glastonbury Abbey................................................................................ 87 Catherine A. M. Clarke

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Table of Contents

Writing Allegory Erotic Dialogue and the Meaning of Margaryte in Usks The Testament of Love............................................................... 104 Alice Spencer The Object of Allegory: Truth and Prophecy in Stephen Hawes Conforte of Lovers................................................................................... 133 Jane Griffiths Re-reading Allegory Translation of Allegory or Allegory of Translation? Petrarchs Redressing of Boccaccios Griselda ....................................... 156 William Rossiter Reading/Writing Griselda: A Fourteenth-Century Response (Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, MS Plut. 42,1)................... 183 K. P. Clarke Allegory, Cognition, and a Philosophical Controversy: Two Texts by Giovanni Pico della Mirandola......................................... 209 Crofton Black Afterword ................................................................................................ 231 Vincent Gillespie Contributors............................................................................................. 257 Index........................................................................................................ 260

PREFACE

The contributions collected in the present volume of essays were, excepting two, presented at a graduate medieval conference entitled Allegory: Aspects and Approaches, held at Lincoln College, Oxford, June 1011, 2005. If the reader is struck by the collections diversity of both subject-matter and approaches, then this is to be seen within the context of a conference that drew together people from various backgrounds and methodologies. We were unconcerned that the conference made any particular statement other than to reflect the many faces of allegory. Likewise, this collection of articles is not meant to sit comfortably within any theoretical tradition or ism. The mix, it is hoped, will generate its own connections and contradictions for the reader: Varietas, after all, delectat. We have incurred several debts during the organization of the first conference and the editing of this book. Professor Eric Stanley closed the conference with a contribution that has become, here, an introduction to, or rather an opening to the complexity of the subject. His support and encouragement is warmly acknowledged here and deeply appreciated. Professor Peter S. Hawkins, then the Starr Visiting Fellow at Lady Margaret Hall, was, too, a stalworth champion of our venture and his guidance ensured it was far from a folle volo. Professor Vincent Gillespie was often on hand to help us, in very many ways, and his support of the conference, and those that have followed it, is surely a key to its success. The Rector of Lincoln College and the Faculty of English Language and Literature were generous in their financial support without which the conference would simply not have been possible. Mary Carr K. P. Clarke Marco Nievergelt

ALLEGORY THROUGH THE AGES, AS READ MAINLY IN ENGLAND AND AS SEEN ANYWHERE E.G. STANLEY

Allegory in Classical Antiquity

Allegorical imagery, whatever its places of origin may have been, developed in Classical Antiquity, and so one turns with due reverence to Johann Winckelmann, 17171768. He wrote a monograph, An Essay on Allegory, especially for Art, which begins (1766, p. iii):1 With none of my writings have I been more fearful to publish than with this, because I feared not to be able to succeed in my intention or to fulfil what might be expected of it. Fearfulness comes to anyone trying to write on allegory. The subject is too multifarious for assured success, even in Winckelmanns study of 168 pages (plus indexes), even when basically confined to Classical Antiquity. He does not define allegory; in his second chapter, he comments on details, how, for example, the gods are depicted, what symbols are associated with them, and how the beholder recognizes the gods because of such symbols. His third chapter deals with abstracts personified. Evening is his first example: the Seasons, Night and Day, and many more, both Classical and Renaissance, and later. He is not concerned with Christian imagery, abstract and often Counter-Reformation: how to represent the Sacred Name of Jesus, how the Immaculate Conception, subjects illimitably allegorical in every aspect, including their iconography. Some proverbial phrases such as Time flies or flees, Tempus fugit, invite visual representation. The proverb comes in Chaucers Clerks Tale, when the spokesman of the populace of Saluces urges the young Walter to
1

Mit keiner meiner Schriften bin ich furchtsamer gewesen, als mit dieser, hervorzutreten, weil ich meine Absicht nicht erreichen knnen, und befrchte die Erwartung derselben erfllet zu haben. Unless otherwise stated, all translations are mine in this paper.

Allegory Through the Ages

get married soonbut Chaucer uses it to refer to Time, not he in tune with Time personified (Ruggiers 1979, fol. 175ro; Furnivall 1873, 4067 lines

11619):
And thenketh lord / among youre thoghtes wyse How at oure dayes passe / in sondry wyse For thogh we slepe / or wake / or renne / or ryde Ay fleeth the tyme / it nel no man abyde.

The word allegory; what it stood for in different periods; its only biblical use at Galatians 4:24
In the Middle Ages allegory was in the first place verbal, crying out for exegesis. In the Renaissance and after, much influenced by Classical Antiquity, allegory more strongly involves visuality. Medieval allegory typically involves biblical exegesis. The word itself is used in the Bible only once, at Galatians 4:24, and it is not recorded in English before the first Wycliffite Bible, where it is explained as goostly vndirstondinge, that is spiritual interpretation; MEDs definition (Kurath, et al., 1952 2001, I, 199200) of the word allegory confines itself to the use of the word in biblical exegesis:
allegorie: 1. Theol[ogy] One of the four methods or levels in the interpretation of Holy Writ [i.e. the literal (temporal), spiritual (allegorical), moralizing (tropological), and mystical (anagogical)]: spiritual interpretation, presentation, or meaning (of a text); bi (in) ~, by way of spiritual or symbolic interpretation, allegorically. ... 2. bi ~, by means of symbolism, symbolically; in maner of ~, ? figuratively.

That is not sufficient for medieval allegory, and MED has for the same phrase, bi allegorie, two interpretations, allegorically and symbolically, and the phrase in maner of allegorie is interpreted as a questioning ? figuratively. Is allegory the same as symbol, the same perhaps as figure? For the exegetical sense, MED quotes Galatians 4:24 in the earlier Wycliffite Version of the Bible, which reads (with the intercalated words in italics (Forshall and Madden 1850, IV, 404):2 The
2 Variants given in the apparatus include by another vndirstondinge and gospelles vndirstondinge. The later Wycliffite version does not use the phrase said by allegorie, but has instead seid bi an othir vndirstonding, and a side-note explicates an othir vnderstonding: bi gostli vndirstonding, thou it is fer fro Jerusalem bi space of londis.

On Allegory

whiche thingis ben seid by allegorie, or goostly vndirstondinge. The context of the word allegory in the Epistle is of interest, literally translated in the Rhemes New Testament (1582, 505, annotations 508) Galatians 4:226, which refers to the casting forth of Hagar and Ishmael in Genesis chapter 21: 3
22 For it is written that Abraham had two sonnes: one of the bond-woman, and one of the free-woman. 23 But he that of the bond-woman, was borne according to the flesh: and he that of the free-woman, by the promisse.24 which things are said by an allegorie. For these are the two testaments. The one from mount Sina, gendring vnto bondage: which is Agar, (25 for Sina is a mountaine in Arabia, which hath affinitie to that which now is Hierusalem) and serueth with her children. 26 But that Hierusalem which is aboue, is free: which is our mother.

An exegesis is supplied by the English College of Rhemes in an Annotation:

24. By an allegorie.] Here we learne that the holy Scriptures haue beside the litteral sense, a deeper spiritual and more principal meaning: which is not only to be taken of the holy wordes, but of the very factes and persons reported: both the speaches and the actions being significatiue ouer and aboue the letter. Which pregnancie of manifold senses if S. Paul had not signified him self in certaine places, the Heretikes had bene lesse wicked and presumptuous in condemning the holy fathers allegorical expositions almost wholy: who now shew them selues to be mere brutish and carnal men, hauing no sense nor feeling of the profunditie of the Scriptures, which our holy fathers the Doctors of Gods Church saw.

No such Romish statement about heretics, wicked and presumptuous ... mere brutish and carnal men, could have been left uncontroverted at the end of the sixteenth century, and the Puritan William Fulke (1589, 327vo 328ro) replied vigorously, and at a length on such Allegorical interpretations:

Cf. the Vulgate (Wordsworth, et al., 18891941), II, 3902, Galatians 4:22-6: scriptum est enim | quoniam Abraham duos filios habuit | unum de ancilla et unum de libera | 23 sed qui de ancilla secundum carnem natus est | qui autem de libera per repromissionem | 24 quae sunt per allegoriam dicta. | Haec enim sunt duo testamenta | unum quidem a monte Sina in seruitutem generans | quae est Agar | 25 Sina enim mons est in Arabia | qui coniunctus est ei quae nunc est Hierusalem et seruit cum filiis eius | 26 illa autem quae sursum est Hierusalem libera est | quae est mater nostra.

Allegory Through the Ages We learne that Abrahams house being the Church, was a figure or paterne of the Church to come, and that all notable mutations therein doe prefigure or set forth, the like in the whole Church that followed... But that the Apostle in this place vsing the terme of allegory, meaneth no such descanting vpon the Scripture, as you [the Papists at Rhemes] call a deeper and spirituall, and more principall meaning, diuers of the ancient fathers also doe beare witnesse. First Chrysostome vpon this place saieth: A figure he calleth vnproperly an allegory. But this is the meaning of what he saieth. This history declareth not onely that which appeareth, but also setteth foorth higher matters. Theodoret vpon this place sayth: The diuine Apostle hath sayd these things are sayd by allegory, meaning that they are otherwise vnderstood, for he hath not taken away the story, but teacheth what things are prefigured in the story. S. Ambrose saith: Isaack was borne to be a figure of Christ. Therefore he saith these thinges are said by allegorie, because the persons of Ismael and Isaack by one thing signifie another. Photius saith: They are spoken allegorically, that is, the natiuities of these two sonnes were figures of two testaments. These prefigurations differ much from allegoricall interpretation... [I]t is not lawfull to conclude euery truth out of any text of scripture, where the Holy ghost meaneth not to teach any such matter. How vaine a thing therfore those allegories are, the varietie of them gathered by diuers men out of the same text, doth declare, seeing they haue no foundation in the word, but only in the braine of the inuenter. And it is as easie a matter to interpret Virgils Aeneades, or Ouids Metamorphosis allegoricallie as the scriptures, and to applie all things in them to truth and spirituall vnderstanding.

The exegesis by the Seminary at Rhemes, as controverted zealously by Fulke, provides a good set of examples of what allegory is, attached to the only use of that word in the whole Bible.4 Prefigurations are clearly allegorical. Thus Isaac prefigures Christ: the parallel of the sacrifice is close and literal. That, however, according to this Pauline allegory, the nativity of Ishmael figures the Old Testament and the nativity of Isaac the New Testament requires a spiritual leap of understanding too far for a Puritan, and probably a leap too far for a modern reader. But pace Fulke, it is allegorical so to interpret their nativities because St Paul says it is. If we indulge allegory further we may see in Isaac typologically Ecclesia of the New Testament and in Hagar and Ishmael Synagoga of the Old Testament cast forth by Abraham as Synagoga is to be cast forth. There may be some
Galatians 4:2231 is the Epistle read at Mass on the Fourth Sunday in Lent; according to a side-note in the Rhemes New Testament, and cf. the Sarum Missal (Legg 1916, 79); so also in the Uses of York and Hereford (Blunt 1907, 2723); the Book of Common Prayer begins the reading at verse 21.
4

On Allegory

beauty in that view made lively in medieval statuary, for example, in the statues outside a door of Strasbourg cathedral (and now sheltering in the museum there). Synagoga is blindfolded with her staff broken, and Ecclesia is triumphant, and often with a flag aflutter. Art is, however, unlikely to reconcile us to how, in the unallegorical reality of the world, Abraham shamefully cast forth Hagar and her son into the desert.

Allegory and symbolism

Superficially, St Pauls explicit use of allegory seems akin to the symbolism with which the elements of the Eucharist are invested because of the words spoken by Jesus at the Last Supper and used liturgically still: Matthew 26:28:5 Drinke ye al of this. For this is my blovd of the new Testament, which shal be shed for many vnto remission of sinnes. The Latin liturgy has the cup of my blood of the new and everlasting Testament, the mystery of the Faith, but, in accord with the wording of the Gospel, the Book of Common Prayer has left out et eterni, and mention of the calix (in line with the practice that the laity share in both elements), and crucially has left out misterium fidei; cf. Joseph Ketley (1844, 89); Blunt (1907, 390). The words my bloud of the new Testament are allegorical: they encapsulate a mysterium fidei, but what exactly they mean is far from clear. The nature of allegory as understood in the Christian Middle Ages becomes clearer when one tries to follow its application to central mysteries of the Faith. For the elements of the Eucharist to become in reality Christs body and blood requires the witness of a miracle such as that of the Mass of Bolsena in 1263, to be seen in many late medieval and Renaissance works of art, including a transfigured representation in Raphaels celebrated fresco in the Vatican Stanza dEliodoro (1512 1514). That miracle, however, does not explain the allegory expressed in the words this is my bloud of the new Testament, which remains a mysterium Fidei, as much as that Ishmael is the Old Testament and that Isaac is the New Testament. Shortly after the miracle at Bolsena, post hoc ergo propter hoc, Pope Urban IV ruled on the Feast of Corpus Christi, and
5 New Testament (1582, 756); Wordsworth et al. (18891941, I, 154), Mattheus 26:278: bibite ex hoc omnes | 28 hic est enim sanguis meus noui testamenti | qui pro multis effunditur in remissionem peccatorum. Cf. the Canon of the Mass (Legg 1916, 222): Accipite et bibite ex eo omnes... Hic est enim calix sanguinis mei noui et eterni testamenti. misterium fidei. qui pro uobis et pro multis effundetur in remissionem peccatorum. All the Uses current in Britain and the Roman Liturgy have this wording (Maskell 1882, 1423).

Allegory Through the Ages

English piety resulted in several extant lyrics, including The Corpus Christi Carol with the last stanza And by that beddes side ther stondith a ston | Corpus Christi wretyn theron; but what that means and to what historical event it may form an allegorical or symbolic appendage is much discussed and much disputed, often without clear relevance.6 Clearer in its origins as an image of Corpus Christi is the Pelican in her Piety vulning herself, based on the exegesis of Psalm 101:7 (Biblia Sacra, 19261995, X, 21920): similis factus sum pelicano solitudinis | factus sum sicut nycticorax in domicilio; (Holie Bible, 1609, 1610, II, 184) I am become like a pellicane of the wildernes. I am become as a nightcrow in the house. The verse is expounded at length, in Psalmum CI sermo I, 78, by St Augustine (Dekkers and Fraipont 1990, III, 14302), pivoting on the great similitude of Christ and the bird, the pelican according to a fable reviving its dead children with the blood from its self-inflicted wounds, and sinful mankind revived by Christs blood. The Pelican in her Piety, Ecclesia and Synagoga, as well as the Mass of Bolsena have been made palpable through the visual arts; the first is a fabular similitude, the two female figures are allegorical personifications, the last is no allegory, but if one believes the miracle, it is a historical event perceived as resolving doubt in the bodily presence in the elements of the Eucharist. The Pelican is allegorical because understood as standing for mankinds renewal of spiritual life through Christs Crucifixion and Resurrection. The personified Ecclesia and Synagoga become allegories because with their attributes they form a complex theological statement. A comparable, more modern, secular example is Britannia personified and an allegory for Britain. On the coins, still on the 50p piece, she sits on her throne, a lion at her feet, woe to any attacker, and by her side the shield that shields the nation. Allegory is handled dramatically in the visual arts after the Middle Ages, a visuality that declines from the eighteenth century onwards, except in traditional representations as of Britannia. The statue of Liberty, a gift from the people of France in 1886, still welcomes immigrants to the United States if they happen to arrive in New York by ship; and, less pompously, there are Picassos pigeons of peace and his half-legendary, half-egocentric Minotaur of sexuality. Visual allegory in modern times must not be left on a sour or grudging note. It is best to see the work of an allegorist from his side, as indeed we can when considering John Gibsons group of Queen Victoria in the
6

See Greene (1977, 1956, notes 4237), no. 322 (Balliol College MS 354, 16th century).

On Allegory

Palace of Westminster. Gibson himself records the commission with the childlike, guileless loyalty characteristic of him, as we learn from Lady Eastlake (1870, 2058) who has taken it from his own autobiographical notes:
In 1850 I was informed that it was intended to erect a statue of Her Majesty within the Houses of Parliament to be placed in a recess in the Princes Chamber. . . . Prince Albert . . . proposed that two allegorical figures should be added, so as to form an important group. I accordingly sent a design from Rome [Gibsons place of residence] representing Her Majesty seated upon her throne, with her sceptre in her left hand, and a laurel crown the emblem of the reward of merit in her right. On her right hand the figure of Wisdom, on her left that of Justice. These figures stand a little below the throne, giving a pyramidical form to the group. Certain geometrical forms are necessary in composition. . . . His Royal Highness suggested that, the Sovereign being a lady, the figure of Wisdom might be exchanged for that of Clemency. . . . I completed the monument in five years. It stands in the Princes Chamber, where it receives a fine light, which is of the first importance for sculpture... I was requested to write a description of the group for visitors to read when surveying the monument. I wrote the following: In the Princes Chamber is represented in marble her most gracious Majesty Queen Victoria, sitting upon her throne, holding her sceptre and a laurel crown that is, governing and rewarding. The back of the throne is surmounted by lions, expressive of British strength and courage, and the footstool is adorned by sea-horses, to signify dominion upon the ocean. The horse is an emblem of war. On the right of the Sovereign stands Justice; on the left Clemency. Justice holds the sword and balance round her neck is suspended the image of Truth. In Egypt the judge, when pronouncing the sentence of death, put on his neck a small golden image of Truth. The expression of Justice is inflexible, while that of Clemency is full of sympathy and sadness sad for the constant sins that come to her knowledge, while with lenity she keeps the sword sheathed and offers the olive-branch, the sign of peace. On the front of the pedestal is a bas-relief of Commerce. On the right side is Science designated by a youth pondering over geometry. On the left a figure denoting the useful arts. In the background are represented the steam-engine, the telegraph-wire, and other objects. The figures are colossal; that of Her Majesty being eight feet high the two supporting figures are above seven.

Of course, like many things about a hundred and fifty years old, this account is dated in its deferential style, and in the now politically incorrect thought that Clemency, rather than Wisdom, should stand by a female sovereign. Gibsons description of the allegory he has created is, nevertheless, of interest: the dimensions, the geometrical forms, the

Allegory Through the Ages

symbolism of royal sway with Wisdom or (better?) Clemency and Justice (based on Truth) slightly smaller in size than the queen herself, considerably more than one and a half times her actual diminutive height, the attributes of Britains military, maritime, and colonial power, and representations of achievements in commerce, in science, and in the useful arts, all in one group, designed to stand in the presence of Royalty at the centre of parliamentary government of what was then the most powerful nation on earth.

Definitions of allegory
The general meaning of allegory is well understood, but the word is difficult to define. Isidore of Seville (Lindsay 1911, I, 37, 22) defines the word etymologically: Allegoria est alieniloquium, which, even with his not very helpful examples, get us nowhere except to remind us that the Greek etymon means other-speaking.7 That is not enough for allegoria in the Renaissance and later; for allegoryas understood in Classical Antiquity, less often perhaps in the Middle Ages, and then strongly again in the Renaissance and latercombines other-speaking with higher-seeing. Sir James Murray (1884, s.v.) is particularly good in the last four words of his definition: his sense 1 is, Description of a subject under the guise of some other subject of aptly suggestive resemblance. Johnson (1755, s.v.), always brilliant on abstracts, adds a contrastive example:8 A figurative discourse, in which something other is intended, than is contained in the words literally taken; as, wealth is the daughter of diligence, and the parent of authority. Johnson in his quotations likes, whenever possible, to present evidence from both the Humanities and the Sciences. He has two quotations for the word allegory. The first is from Ben Jonsons Discoveries (Herford and Simpson 19251952, VIII. 625 lines 201921, XI, 2689), good advice to authors that allegories should not be drawn out inordinately, if obscurity and affectation are to be avoided. The second quotation, by Peacham no details (Peacham 1634, II, 114) in Johnsonsounds scientific, explaining that by this word Nymphe is meant nothing else but by
7

Isidores examples are: Virgil, Aeneid, I. 1845, the three stags straying by the shore killed by Aeneas are interpreted as symbolizing the warlike enemy; and Eclogue III, 71, the ten golden apples interpreted as the ten books of Virgils Eclogues. 8 Samuel Johnson (ed.), A Dictionary of the English Language, 2 vols (London: by W. Strahan, for J. and P. Knapton; T. and T. Longman; C. Hitch and L. Hawes; A. Millar; and R. and J. Dodsley, 1755), s.v.

On Allegory

allegory the vegetative humour or moisture that quickeneth and giveth life to trees, plants, herbs and flowers, whereby they grow.9 Peacham is writing not a biological treatise, but an exquisite practise in the visual arts, and he goes on: . . . whereby they grow and increase, wherefore [nymphs] are fained to be the daughters of the Ocean, the mothers of flouds, the nurses of Bacchus, goddesses of fields, who have the protection and charge of Mountaines, feeding of hearbs, woods, medowes, trees, and in generall the whole life of man.

The alleged falsity of allegory

In the age of Spenser, Puttenham (Willcock 1936, 154) is witty at the expense of allegory in The Arte of English Poesie:10
As figures be the instruments of ornament in euery language, so be they also in a sorte abuses or rather trespasses in speach, because they passe the ordinary limits of common vtterance, and be occupied of purpose to deceiue the eare and also the minde, drawing it from plainnesse and simplicitie to a certaine doublenesse, whereby our talke is more guilefull & abusing, for what els is your Metaphor but an inuersion of sence by transport; your allegorie by a duplicitie of meaning or dissimulation vnder couert and darke intendments: one while speaking obscurely and in riddle called nigma: another while by common prouerbe or Adage called Paremia: then by merry skoffe called Ironia: then by bitter tawnt called Sarcasmus. . .

He goes on: our maker or Poet is appointed not for a iudge, but rather for a pleader, and that of pleasant & louely causes, so that all his abuses tende but to dispose the hearers to mirth and sollace by pleasant conueyance and efficacy of speach, they are not in truth to be accompted vices but for vertues in the poeticall science very commendable. Puttenham first emphasizes truth, but then relents, because such poetic departure from literal truth delights, and delight is traditionally considered an aim of poetry. At the end of the seventeenth century Richard Blackmore has a pompous preface to an heroick poem of his (1695, beginning of the preface, and sig. [bii]ro) in which he sets forth at the outset the desirable morality of poetry: To what ill purposes soever Poetry has been abusd,
9

10

I quote the spellings, etc., as in Peacham, not as in Johnson. The attribution of the work, published anonymously in 1589, to Puttenham has been questioned.

10

Allegory Through the Ages

its true and genuine End is by universal Confession, the Instruction of our Minds, and Regulation of our Manners. Later in the preface, he states at some length the rules required for a heroic poem. He explains how allegory must not be overdone, and how, a century after Ariosto and Spenser wrote, though he recognizes their art, he finds their fanciful use of allegory altogether too much [sig. b2ro]:
The Action must be related in an Allegorical manner; and this Rule is best observd, when as Divines speak; there is both a Literal Sense obvious to every Reader, and that gives him satisfaction enough if he sees no farther; and besides another Mystical or Typical Sense, not hard to be discoverd by those Readers that penetrate the matter deeper. . . . Ariosto and Spencer, however great Wits, not ... attending to any sober Rules, are hurried on with a boundless, impetuous Fancy over Hill and Dale, till they are both lost in a Wood of Allegories. Allegories so wild, unnatural, and extravagant, as greatly displease the Reader. This way of writing mightily offends in this Age; and tis a wonder how it came to please in any. There is indeed a way of writing purely Allegorical, as when Vices and Virtues are introducd as Persons; the first as Furies, the other as Divine Persons or Goddesses, which still obtains, and is well enough accommodated to the present Age. For the Allegory is presently discernd, and the Reader is by no means imposd on, but sees it immediately to be an Allegory, and is both delighted and instructed with it.

Towards the end of the next century, Thomas Warton (1774[1806], III, 4989) derives Elizabethan (and, no doubt, seventeenth-century) spectacles from the moralities of a more religious age:
Allegory has been derived from the religious dramas into our civil spectacles. The masques and pageantries of the age of Elizabeth were not only furnished by the heathen divinities, but often by the virtues and vices impersonated, significantly decorated, accurately distinguished by their proper types, and represented by living actors. The antient symbolical shews of this sort began now to lose their old barbarism and a mixture of religion, and to assume a degree of poetical elegance and precision. Nor was it only in the conformation of particular figures that much fancy was shewn, but in the contexture of some of the fables or devices presented by groupes of ideal personages. These exhibitions quickened creative invention, and reflected back on poetry what poetry had given. From their familiarity and public nature, they formed a national taste for allegory; and the allegorical poets were now writing to the people. Even romance was turned into this channel. In the Fairy Queen, allegory is wrought upon chivalry, and the feats and figments of Arthurs round table are moralised. The virtues of magnificence and chastity are here personified: but they are imaged with the forms, and under the agency, of romantic knights and

On Allegory damsels. What was an afterthought in Tasso, appears to have been Spensers premeditated and primary design. In the mean time, we must not confound these moral combatants of the Fairy Queen with some of its other embodied abstractions, which are purely and professedly allegorical.

11

The Song of Songs

Peacham (1634, I, 7980) shows how the Psalter and especially the Song of Songs were understood by all exegetes of the Bible, till in our age, when eroticism has become acceptable in the now demysticized holy discourse:11
What lively descriptions are there [in the Psalter] of the Majesty of God, the estate and security of Gods children, the miserable condition of the wicked? What lively similitudes and comparisons, as the righteous man to a bay tree, the Soule to a thirsty Hart, vnity to oyntment and the dew of Hermon? What excellent Allegories, as the vine planted in gypt; what Epiphonemas, prosopopoeas and whatsoever else may be required to the texture of so rich and glorious a peece? And the song of Solomon (which is onely left us of a thousand) is it not a continued Allegory of the Mysticall love betwixt Christ and his Church?

Peacham directs the reader to see in the Psalter and the Song of Songs such figures as simile, allegory, epiphonema, and prosopopoeia, terms that reach back further than the Middle Ages. The allegory of the Song of Songs, as that book of the Bible was understood for 1500 years or more, is significant. The opening words of the Song of Songs are, in the Doway translation (Holie Bible 1609, 1610, I, 135), Let him kisse me with the kisse of his mouth: because thy brestes are better then wine, rendering the Vulgate (Biblia Sacra 19261995, XI, 179), Osculetur me oscula oris sui | quia meliora sunt ubera tua vino. The book therefore opens with initial O, and Kings College Cambridge MS 19 fol. 21vo of the twelfth century, Bedes commentary on the Song of Songs, shows a nimbed bearded figure, Christ, very close to a nimbed female figure, Ecclesia, both sitting on a throne; his left hand and her right hand are touching each other, and

11 In Psalm 37:35 (Authorized Version) the wicked, as if righteous, is seen spreading himselfe like a greene bay tree. I quote A.V. throughout this paper from Pollard (1911). For the soul compared with a thirsty hart, see Psalm 42:1; unity with ointment and the dew of Hermon, Psalm 133; a vine out of Egypt, Psalm 80:8.

12

Allegory Through the Ages

she is kissing him.12 Where we in this century and the second half of the last see sex, more pious times saw holy spirituality. In Donnes Holy Sonnet XVIII (Grierson 1912, I, 330, II, pp. lxxxlxxxii, 2356) is Christs spouse the Ecclesia of seven-hilled Romewhich Donne in his youth followed, as did his distinguished forebearsor is it the Reformed Church of Germany and Britain? This deeply troubled poem should make us see the inadequacy of a sniggering response to an allegory so enveloped in faith and love and fear:
Show me deare Christ, thy spouse, so bright and clear. What! is it She, which on the other shore Goes richly painted? or which robd and tore Laments and mournes in Germany and here? Sleepes she a thousand, then peepes up one yeare? Is she selfe truth and errs? now new, now outwore? Doth she, and did she, and shall she evermore On one, on seaven, or on no hill appeare? Dwells she with us, or like adventuring knights First travaile we to seeke and then make Love?13 Betray kind husband thy spouse to our sights, And let myne amorous soule court thy mild Dove, Who is most trew, and pleasing to thee, then When sheis embracd and open to most men.

Donne uses the Song of Songs in his sermons, for more general explication, unrelated to his own position; thus in his (second) Serm. LI. Preached upon the Penitentiall Psalmes, with a marginal reference to Canticles 4:12, the Song of Solomon in the Authorized Version 4:1012 (Pollard 1911, unpaginated): 10 How faire is thy loue, my sister, my spouse! how much better is thy loue then wine! and the smell of thine oyntments then all spices!. . . 12 A garden inclosed is my sister, my spouse: a spring shut vp, a fountaine sealed. Donnes sermon (1640, 50921, at p. 515):
God sayes of his Church, Hortus conclusus soror mea, My sister, my Spouse is a Garden enclosed, as a spring shut in, and a fountaine sealed
12 The initial is illustrated in Kirschbaum (19681972, I, 319), s.v. Brutigam u. Braut, i.e. Christ and Ecclesia as bridegroom and bride. 13 Here to make love means to pay court (to), pay amorous attention (to); not to copulate (with), a sense not recorded before 1950 in Burchfield (19721986, II, 744), s.v. love, sb., 7.g.

On Allegory up; But therein is our advantage, who, by being enwrapped in the Covenant, as the seed of the faithfull, as the children of Christian Parents, are borne if not within this walled Garden, yet with a key in our hand to open the doore, that is, with a right and title, to the Sacrament of Baptisme. The Church is a Garden walled in, for their better defence and security that are in it; but not walled in to keepe any out, who, either by being borne within the Covenant, inherit a right to it, or by accepting the grace which is offered them, acquire, and professe a desire to enter thereinto.

13

Grammatical gender
The place in allegory of gender follows on easily from consideration of the beloved understood as Ecclesia in the Song of Songs. In Winckelmanns general theory of allegory grammatical gender matters; it is central in our grasp of personification, an aspect of allegory, which when female, that is feminine, allows one to see some abstraction as a daughter or mother of some abstraction, or a nurse (of Bacchus, for example), or some goddess. In the twenty-first century (accustomed to other historical speculations about the origins of gender in Indo-European languages or further afield), we are unlikely to accept Winckelmanns patriarchal view of the matter:14
Nature itself has been the teacher of allegory, and allegorical language seems to belong more properly to nature than the signifiers15 of our thoughts devised at a later stage: for the language of allegory is essential, giving a true picture of the things such as is to be found in only a small number of words of the earliest languages, and which depict thoughts ... Nature, speaking in figures, is to be recognized in traces of figurative concepts, even in the gender of the words which the first who called them so combined with the words. Gender testifies to a contemplation of active
14 Winckelmann (1766, 3): Die Natur selbst ist der Lehrer der Allegorie gewesen, und diese Sprache scheinet ihr eigener als die nachher erfundene [sic] Zeichen unserer Gedanken: denn sie ist wesentlich, und giebt ein wahres Bild der Sachen, welches in wenig Worten der ltesten Sprachen gefunden wird, und die Gedanken mahlen... Die in Bildern redende Natur und die Spuren von bildlichen Begriffen erkennet man so gar in dem Geschlechte der Worte, welches die ersten Benenner derselben mit den Worten verbunden haben. Das Geschlecht zeuget von einer Betrachtung der wirkenden und leidenden Beschaffenheit, und zugleich des Mittheilens und des Empfangens, welches man sich Verhltniweise in den Dingen vorgestellet, so da das Wirkende in mnnlicher Gestalt und das Leidende weiblich eingekleidet worden. 15 My use of signifier (the English rendering of Saussures signifiant) is an attempt to render Winckelmanns Zeichen sign.

14

Allegory Through the Ages and passive quality, and at the same time to a contemplation of the impartment or reception which were imagined appropriately in the objects, with the result that the active was clad in masculine shape, the passive in feminine shape.

Winckelmanns subject is the interpretation of allegory in Classical Antiquity, and though he has modern examples too, thus the beaver stands for Canada to give just one example (Winckelmann 1766, 135), he is not concerned with the fact, so important for medieval and later allegory, that Latin abstracts are most often feminine, and therefore personified or allegorized as female figures. In a fable by La Fontaine (1838, I, [192], livre V fable xii), based on the sopic Aegrotus et Medicus,16 two physicians attend a dying man. One of the two, looking desperately sad in Grandvilles illustration,17 is Tant-pis representing Life (or Health) at the time of the patients death. His confrrelooking comfortably pleased in Grandvilles illustration, with skull and bones embroidered on his chestis Tant-mieux representing Death in whose hands the dying man will soon be. In French la vie (or la sant) and la mort are feminine; and the two physicians, in la Fontaines wording confrres, are only representatives of Life (or Health) and Death, not, of course, la Vie (or la Sant) and la Mort themselves. Not all of the world of Fable is allegory, but some fables come close to it, as this fable certainly does.

Grammatical gender; personification and prosopoeia

Personification, symbolism, and allegory are distinct though related. Jacob Grimm is at his best and grandest when in the second edition of his Deutsche Mythologie he adds two chapters, personifications and poetic art. He believes that poetry arose out of mythical personification, an idea present in Winckelmann, but less closely studied by him when he discusses how gods personify abstractions. Grimm (1844, 8356) says:18
See Perry (1952, 387), no. 170 . Grandville is Jean Ignace Isidore Grard (18031847). 18 Was in sprache und sage tief verwachsen ist kann der mythologie niemals fremd geblieben sein, es mu auf ihrem grund und boden eigenthmliche nahrung gesogen haben, und jene grammatische, dichterische allbelebung darf sogar in einer mythischen prosopopie ihren ursprung suchen. Da alle einzelnen gtter und gttlichen eigenschaften auf der idee eines elements, eines gestirns, einer naturerscheinung, einer kraft und tugend, einer kunst und fertigkeit, eines heils oder unheils beruhen, die sich als gegenstnde heiliger anbetung geltend gemacht
17 16

On Allegory Whatever grows deep into language and spoken tradition cannot remain outside mythology; it must have imbibed fitting nourishment on its soil; and the aforenamed universalizing animation, at once grammatical and poetic, may truly trace its origin to a mythical prosopopoeia. Since all individual gods and divine attributes consist in the idea of one element, one constellation, one natural phenomenon, one strength and virtue, one art and skill, one good or evil fortune, which have achieved prevalence as objects of sacred veneration; in that way concepts related to such ideas attain deification, even if in themselves impersonal and abstract. A definite personality is proper to such animals, plants, or stars as have reference to individual gods or have their origin in metamorphosis. We may go so far as to say that in general the gods of paganism have altogether proceeded from those various personifications which were closest to the genius and tradition of each nation, except that, by uniting several attributes and as a result of a long-continued tradition, a more exalted standing was certain to be conferred upon individual figures.

15

For all the grandeur of Grimms concepts, and his language is often difficult, there are not infrequently aspects and ingredients in his statements that may not be to the taste of readers in the twenty-first century. As a comparativist he generalizes, undeterred by distances in time and space, about linguistic, literary, and cultural phenomena. He tries to fit what he says into a strongly held belief in national character, each people different in sinnesart und entwicklung, national genius and tradition, for that explains differences in personification resulting in the deities and in the mythology peculiar to each nation. In his writings, the grammar of personification is not a mere aspect of allegorical personification expressed in poetry, but, uniquelyand essentially, as Grimm sees it grammar brings forth poetry. Heathendom elevated nature by making natural phenomena worthy of veneration: it is a lost world. I do not know whether Grimm had in mind Schillers poem Die Gtter Griechenlands, a lament for the gods and lower divinities of the Greeks. A world that does not endow abstractions and natural phenomena with divinity is an

haben; so erlangen auch ihnen verwandte, an sich unpersnliche und abgezogne vorstellungen auf vergtterung anspruch. thieren, pflanzen, sternen, die sich auf besondere gtter beziehen oder aus verwandlung entstanden sind, wird eine bestimmte persnlichkeit gebhren. Man knnte sagen, die gtter des heidenthums seien berhaupt hervorgegangen aus den verschiedenen personificationen, die der sinnesart und entwicklung jedes volks zunchst gelegen haben; nur da den einzelnen gestalten durch vereinigung mehrerer eigenschaften und lang fortgetragne berlieferung hheres ansehn bereitet werden muste.

16

Allegory Through the Ages

entgtterte Natur, ungodded nature: 19

Alle jene Blthen sind gefallen von des Nordes winterlichem Wehn. E i n e n zu bereichern, unter allen, mute diese Gtterwelt vergehn. ... gleich dem todten Schlag der Pendeluhr, dient sie knechtisch dem Gesetz der Schwere die entgtterte Natur! [All those blossoms are fallen in the Norths wintry blast. To enrich the One God among them all this Olympian world had to perish. ... like the dead stroke of the pendulum-clock, ungodded nature serves slavishly the law of gravity.]

In the same part of Deutsche Mythologie, Grimm used apostrophe as obviously personifying the thing addressed, and, like Dr Johnson before him, he refers to terms of family relationship to express the relationship of things. As an example he quotes chapter 35 of Skldskaparml in which the awl or bodkin (alr) is seen as the brother of the knife (knfr):20 our artless Antiquity delighted to emphasize such animation by means of the usages of apostrophe and family relationship. Grimms examples, however, involve no allegory. One thinks of the Riddles of the AngloSaxons in Latin and English which similarly give life to things without allegorical overtones or symbolism. For example, in Riddle 88 lines 925 the two horns that form an antler are referred to playfully and riddlingly as brothers, the absence of one leaves the other brotherless, thus lines 20b 25.21
Die Gtter Griechenlands exists in two version. I quote lines 1537, 1668, of the original version of 1788 (Petersen and Beiner 1943, 194; Kurscheidt and Oellers 1991, 162, note p. 174). According to a note by the editors, the effect of the wintry winds of the North is reminiscent of Winckelmanns distinction between the fair climate of Greece and the rough northern climate, which is the cause of the distinction between Greek and Northern art, Kultur, and religion. 20 Grimm (1844, 835), unser naives alterthum liebt es solche belebung durch die gebruche der anrede und verwandtschaft hervorzuheben. For the family relationship of alr and knfr see Rask (1818, 133); cf. Sigursson and Jnsson (18481887, I, 346). I owe the precise references to the 1818 and 1848 editions to Professor Roberta Frank (Yale). 21 The text of the riddle is badly damaged at the beginning, but all commentators are agreed that horns are involved, whether or not they are gables, or one of the
19

On Allegory Nis min broor her, ac ic sceal broorleas bordes on ende staol weardian, sto[n]dan fste. Ne wat hwr min broor on wera htum eoran sceata eardian sceal, se me r be healfe heah eardade. [My brother is not here, but brotherless I must, at the edge of the table, guard my stand, must stand firm. I do not know where in the possessions of men my brother has to inhabit a corner of the earth, (the brother) who had occupied a high place by my side.]

17

An example of gender mismatch in translation

When a female abstraction is translated into a language with grammatical gender, for example, from Latin into Old English, things can seem to go wrong sexually when the genders do not coincide in the two languages. I have written elsewhere about an example of such an incongruity of gender in King Alfreds version of The Soliloquies ascribed to St Augustine.22 In Latin sapientia is feminine, in Old English wisdom is masculine. That affects the sense of the following passage, in which Alfred greatly amplifies his source:23
Ac ic wolde t wyt sohten nu hwilce s wysdomes lufiendas beon scolen. Hu ne wost u nu t lc ara manna e oerne swie lufa t hine lyst bet accian and cyssan one oerne on br-lic24 onne er r claas beotweona beo? Ic ongyte nu t lufast25 one Wisdom swa two is an inkhorn as is now usually thought. See the full discussion in Gbel (1980, 4269, 43644). 22 Stanley (1994, 457). For a different view of the immediacy of perception when Wisdom is experienced naked, see Waterhouse (1986, 6971). 23 For the Old English see Endter (1922, 423); cf. Hargrove (1902, 42), Carnicelli (1969, 756). Endter and Hargrove print a text of Augustines Soliloquia under the Old English. Hargrove (1904, = 1970, 689), usefully italicizes Alfreds additions. In the passage quoted here only the first sentence goes back to the Latin, Nunc illud quaerimus qualis sis amator sapientiae. 24 Though not recorded in the dictionaries, br-lic may be regarded as a compound, like br-fot barefoot, since the adjective is uninflected; br-lic has no parallel in other Germanic languages, and is presumably a nonce-formation. 25 The editors do not accept the manuscript reading as involving non-expression of the subject pronoun; and its omission is unusual in Old English when person and number, in this case u, is to be inferred only from the ending of lufast, and not from what precedes. Pogatscher (1901, 2867) has no clear parallel for such

18

Allegory Through the Ages swie, and e lyst hine swa wel nacodne ongitan and gefredan t u noldest tte26 nig cla betweuh were. Ac he hine wyle swie seldon negum mn swa openlice geawian;27 on am timum e he nig lim swa br eowian wile onne eowa he hyt swie feawum mannum. Ac ic nat hu u hym onfon mage mid geglofedum handum. u scealt ac don br lic28 ongean gyf u hine gefredan wilt. [But I should like that the two of us now find out of what kind the lovers of Wisdom must be. Do you not know that every person who very much loves another man would rather pat and kiss the other man on the bare body than where there are clothes between them? I now perceive that you so very much love Wisdom, and so much long to get to know and feel him naked that you do not want any cloth to come between. But he (scil. Wisdom) will only very rarely show himself so openly to any person; at those times when he is willing to display any limb thus bare then he displays it to very few people. But I do not know how you can perceive him with gloved hands. You too must put your bare body against his if you wish to feel him.]

Clearly, Wisdom is male because the endings in -ne are accusative masculine as is the pronoun hine referring to Wisdom. It is unlikely that the person addressed is regarded as anything other than male; hine lyst has a masculine reflexive pronoun, and the verb refers to any who would be a lover of Wisdom. Even if there were instances of Anglo-Saxon statements favourable to homosexualityin the laws and penitentials homosexuality is not regarded favourablythis is an allegorical love of Wisdom, but the nature of what lovers do is expressed in terms that do not rule out the normal actions of heterosexual lovers, male and female, when they pat, feel, and kiss each other as they present themselves naked to each other: he who seeks Wisdom, that is naked Truth, must strip himself of all inessentials. Alfred continues a little later gyf u hwilc nlic wif lufodest [if you loved a certain peerless woman];29 and then uses heo to refer back to neuter wif to make the sex of the woman doubly clear.
omission; the most that can be said, however, is that it is unusual, not that it is impossible. 26 MS t ic nig. 27 The next clause has eowian in a closely similar use. DOE (Cameron, et al. 1986) takes the form to be from eowian with initial g-, a development not uncommon in Kentish; cf. Jordan-Crook (1974, 82). 28 Perhaps br lic is to be regarded as a compound (cf. note 24, above), but when the adjectival element is uninflected any distinction between adjective + noun and nominal compound is undemonstrable. 29 MS lofodest as if didst praise, but to love is required here, not to praise. The Latin has si alicujus pulchrae feminae amore flagrares.

On Allegory

19

Abstracts allegorized
In the nineteenth century, as we have seen, figures represent such abstracts as Justice, Glory, Death, and La Patrie in the Panthon in Paris, Liberty on Ellis Island welcomes newcomers to the United States, and Gibson has placed Queen Victoria between Clemency and Justice, complicating the group by further symbolisms. As Richard Blackmore (1695, sig. [bii]ro) says, Vices and Virtues are habitually treated allegorically in words: centuries earlier Prudentius Psychomachia had inspired and inspirited a world of Christian allegory. No wonder then that abstracts are brought to life in Old English, for example in the late poem, Judgement Day II (lines 23542):30
onne druncennes gedwine mid wistum, and hleahter and plega hleapa tsomne, and wrnnes eac gewite heonone, and fsthafolnes feor gewite uncyst onweg, and lc glsa scyldig scyndan on sceade on[n]e; and se earma flyh uncrftiga slp sleac mid sluman slincan on hinder. [Then Drunkenness disappears with the drinks and eatables, and Laughter and Play run off together, and Lechery too goes away from here, and Closefistedness, the vice, goes far away, and every kind of guilty Wantonness, hastening then into the shades; and wretched, enfeebled Sleep, sluggish with Somnolence, flees slinking backwards.]

The author of the early Middle English Sawles Warde is good at breathing life into personified abstractions that are centrally allegorical, livelier than the Latin source, Hugh of St Victor, which is handled very freely in the much-edited Middle English text:31
Ant Warschipe hire easke, Hweonene cumest tu, Fearlac, Deaes munegunge.? Ich cume, he sei, of helle. Of helle? ha sei, Warschipe; ant hauest tu isehen helle? e, sei Fearlac, Witerliche, ofte ant ilome. Nu, sei enne Warschipe, for i trowe, treoweliche tele us hwuch is helle, ant hwet tu hauest isehen rin. Caie (2000, 98). Cf. Stanley (1996, 213-14). Wilson 1938, 10, and source, p. 11; Ker 1960, fol. 74ro; Bennett and Smithers 1968, 250; dArdenne 1977, 170.
31 30

20

Allegory Through the Ages Ant ich, he sei, Fearlac, o mi trowe, blueliche, nawt tah efter et hit is, for et ne mei na tunge tellen, ah efter et ich mei ant con, ertowart ich chulle reodien. [And Prudence asks her, Where do you come from, Fear, Deaths remembrancer? I come, says he, from hell. From hell? says Prudence, and have you seen hell? Yes, says Fear, truly, time and again. Now, Prudence says then, for your truths sake, tell us truly what kind of place hell is, and what you have seen in it. And so I shall, says Fear, gladly, on my truth, not though according to what it is, for no tongue can tell that, but according to what I can tell and know how to, Ill make an effort in that direction.]

An abstract may be given life by personification when skilfully handled. Grammatical gender often matters in that process, but is not essential to its operation. Both death and sleep were masculine in Greek ( and ) and in Old English (dea and slp), but in Latin mors is feminine whereas somnus is masculine. Shelley opened his early poem Queen Mab with the anthropomorphizing lines (Reiman and Freistat 2000, 2004, II, 165):
How wonderful is Death, Death and his brother Sleep! One, pale as yonder waning moon With lips of lurid blue; The other, rosy like the morn When throned on oceans wave, It blushes oer the world: Yet both so passing wonderful!

The brothers Death and Sleep sound all right in English and would have worked in Greek, a language Shelley was at home in. His personification is, however, at times far-fetched: neither Death nor the moon is endowed with lips, blue or otherwise, Sleep is hardly rosy, though the morn is so, and may be thought to announce its presence by blushing when seen throned on oceans wave. We may be dealing with some kind of hypallage, a fallacy akin to, but not identical with, the pathetic fallacy condemned by Ruskin, unless felt by him to be an Idea of Truth, and then perhaps accorded the accolade exquisite, or even praised for exquisite sincerity, Ruskins judgement of Keatss over the unfooted sea in Hyperion, book iii:32 [T]his fallacy is of two principal kinds.
32 Cook and Wedderburn (19031912): V (1904), Modern Painters, III, 20120, ch. XII Of the Pathetic Fallacy, at pp. 205 5 (definition) and 208 8 (on Keats).