12 Allegory

The term allegory (Greek ) comes from classical rhetoric, and means literally saying one thing to mean another. Plutarch says in How the Young Man Should Study Poetry (19e) that it replaced an older term: hyponoia or deep meaning. It was defined in classical times and in the Renaissance primarily as a trope, a figure of speech. Quintilian states: ‘Allegory…either presents one thing in words and another in meaning, or else something absolutely opposed to the meaning of the words. The first type is generally produced by a series of metaphors’ (Education of an Orator VIII vi 44). The idea that allegory is a continued metaphor is a Renaissance commonplace; for example, Henry Peacham in The Garden of Eloquence compares metaphor to a star, and allegory to a constellation of stars. However, although allegory is a rhetorical term, it should not be regarded solely or even chiefly as a matter of technique. Despite the traditional rhetorical definition it has much wider implications. Allegory has its origins in a religious frame of mind, which sees nature and history as charged with hidden divine meanings that can be revealed to the diligent seeker, and it manifests itself both as a method of interpreting texts and as a method of writing. The tendency to see allegory simply as a technical device has resulted in some attempts to elevate symbolism at the expense of allegory. C.S.Lewis’s definition in The Allegory of Love of symbolism as a mode of thought and allegory as a mode of expression reflects this tendency. But allegory is much more flexible than this definition suggests. On the one hand it is associated with general terms like myth, symbol, parable and fable, and on the other with more restricted terms like metaphor, conceit and emblem.

Allegory was first practised in antiquity not as a method of writing but as a method of reading texts. Stoic and, later, Neoplatonic philosophers allegorised the myths narrated by Greek and Roman poets so that they revealed a variety of meanings (this process is described in Chapter 2). This can be described as imposed allegory, since there is no reason to suppose that Virgil or Homer would have recognised some of the meanings read into their works. Allegory can be imposed on authors for different reasons. On a simple level this can be a schoolmasterly attempt to make dangerous authors respectable, and there is something of this tendency in the allegorisation of Homer in the Hellenistic period, Ovid in the Middle Ages, and Ariosto in the Renaissance. More seriously, allegory can be imposed because the interpreter believes that the text he is studying contains significant hidden truths which have escaped careless readers. Both Homer and Virgil were repeatedly allegorised from late antiquity to the Renaissance for this reason. The fifteenth-century Italian humanist Landino in allegorising the Aeneid emphasised its moral meaning: Aeneas’ journey from Troy to Italy guided by Venus is the voyage of man away from passion towards the contemplative life guided by celestial love. Such allegory might even be imposed subsequently by an author himself, as Tasso did in his ‘Account of the Allegory’ of Jerusalem Delivered. However, some Renaissance readers were sceptical of imposed allegory. In the Prologue to Gargantua Rabelais satirises the allegorising reader in the image of a dog trying to lick marrow out of a bone: he regards the Neoplatonising of Homer and the Christianising of Ovid as equally implausible.

The other important text in the development of the tradition of allegorical interpretation is the Bible (1–3). (The biblical tradition is described in Chapter 10.) Critics disagree as to how far the fourfold method of exegesis used in reading the Bible was applied to the interpretation or affected the writing of medieval secular literature. In the Letter to Can Grande Dante suggests that The Divine Comedy should be read in the same way as the Bible (Ch. 10.8), but in the Convivio (or Banquet) II i he distinguishes the allegory practised by poets from that practised by theologians. From the literary point of view the great importance of the biblical tradition of allegorisation is that it reinforced the habit of reading and thinking allegorically. Readers expected literary works to be ‘polysemous’ in Dante’s phrase, that is, to have multiple meanings.

Although it is helpful to distinguish allegorical interpretation from allegorical writing, Renaissance theorists of allegory (mythographers and poets rather than rhetoricians) were not particularly concerned with this distinction. Their interest was rather in the function of allegory, in the relation between the work and its audience, and in the kinds of meaning it contained (7–10). We can isolate three explanations as to why a work of literature contains multiple meanings and why these meanings are not spelt out directly. These explanations use three different kinds of image to express the relationship between allegorical form and meaning. The first explanation is simple, the other two more complex. The first is didactic: allegorical fiction conveys moral truths in a pleasing form. There is nothing secret or obscure about this moral level of meaning; allegory simply makes it more acceptable to its readers. The image here is of the sugared pill or honey on the medicinecup (see Chapter 11). The second explanation is that far from being a means of making clear ideas available, allegory conceals ideas from the vulgar and reveals them only to the deserving. An allegorical work will therefore function in different ways for different readers according to their capacities. Reading allegory becomes a kind of intellectual test: serious readers will identify themselves through the act of reading. Superficial readers will only see the surface meaning; serious readers must work hard to extract or unlock the hidden meaning from the work. Their reward will be religious or philosophical meanings available only to the few. The relevant image here is of the rind and the fruit (7, 10), or the nut and the kernel (Rabelais’ marrow-bone is a parody version). The third explanation is the most interesting. Allegory is regarded as a means of saying things that would otherwise be inexpressible. The image here is that of the veil: the cloud veiling the sun (6, 8), or the veil with which Moses covered his face when he came down from Sinai with the Tables of the Law (1). Through the veil readers can penetrate to the light beyond, which otherwise would dazzle them (12). Thus an allegorical work is not self-contained, but is part of an incomplete process. This process is only completed when its readers fully intuit the meanings which the author himself can only partly express. The question of whether the meanings are consciously intended by the author becomes irrelevant.

The relation between clarity and obscurity in allegory can be seen to be a complicated one. Spenser called The Faerie Queene a ‘dark conceit’ (11); this phrase should perhaps be understood in two different ways. The ‘darkness’ of allegory may refer to the author’s attempt to conceal his meanings from the many and reveal them to the few; the work is thus obscure for some readers and clear for others. Or the ‘darkness’ may refer to the author’s attempt to filter the light of truth through the dark glass of allegorical form; obscurity is thus paradoxically a means of achieving clarity.

Only the simplest kind of didactic allegory with a single level of meaning (sometimes referred to as ‘naive’ allegory) is susceptible of paraphrase. A late but useful example is the House of the Interpreter in Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress: the Interpreter presents Christian with dramatic emblems, and then paraphrases their doctrinal meaning. Complex, polysemous allegory cannot be paraphrased in this way, though readers can distinguish kinds of meaning, the most important being moral, political and historical, religious and philosophical. A complex allegory is not necessarily to be read continuously on several levels of meaning. The allegory may be intermittent; different levels may be present in different parts of the work, or rarely they may be present simultaneously. These levels can all be illustrated from The Faerie Queene (11–14). Moral allegory is usually concerned with conflict between virtues and vices in the individual; an early example is the Psychomachia (war in the soul) of the fourth-century Christian Latin poet Prudentius. The best example of this kind of moral allegory in The Faerie Queene is the quest of Sir Guyon, the Knight of Temperance, in Book II; guided by his palmer, representing reason, he defeats excess and chooses the path of the mean. The allegory of the House of Alma (the temperate body and soul) in II ix is didactic like Bunyan’s. (The Neoplatonic theorist Henry Reynolds in Mythomystes objected to such moral allegory precisely because its meaning was obvious.) Political and historical allegory is likely to matter less to modern readers than the other levels of meaning, but it deserves to be taken seriously, and not regarded simply as a key to historical events and characters. Spenser includes a good deal of specific historical allegory: Book V deals among other topics with the execution of Mary Queen of Scots and the revolt of the Netherlands against Spain. But it is the overall tendency of the historical allegory that is important. Just as in Aeneas’ search for the new Troy Virgil both celebrates and exhorts Augustus, so in Prince Arthur’s search for the Faerie Queene Gloriana Spenser both celebrates and exhorts Elizabeth (see Chapter 5). He makes more sparing use of religious and philosophical allegory, though these levels are more memorable because more universal. The Garden of Adonis in III vi, perhaps the most striking passage in the poem, is philosophical allegory of the kind that reaches clarity through obscurity: no reader can pin down the logic of Spenser’s argument about the relation of mutability to eternity, but every reader who grasps the implications of the allegory has found the heart of the poem. Overtly religious allegory is largely confined to Book I. On the whole The Faerie Queene is a worldly, secular poem, concerned with the problems of living this life, but in Book I, the legend of the Red Cross Knight, or Holiness, Spenser explores the central subject of great medieval allegories like The Divine Comedy and Piers Plowman, the search of the soul for salvation. In fact readers can profitably apply the medieval fourfold method of biblical exegesis to this book (see Chapter 10): the adventure of Red Cross and Una is the story of a knight who kills a dragon and wins a princess; it is also the search of the individual Christian for the true faith, the history of the true Church culminating in the English Reformation under Elizabeth, and the return of redeemed man to paradise by means of Christ’s victory over Satan.

Allegory may take several literary forms. It may be progressive narrative (Spenser’s ‘continued allegory’) or static description. Typical forms are the quest (deriving both from medieval romance and from allegorised epic such as the Odyssey); the dream vision (Plato’s Myth of Er and Cicero’s Dream of Scipio, the latter subsequently allegorised by Macrobius, are classical examples; Piers Plowman and The Pilgrim’s Progress are both dream allegories); the progress, triumph, pageant or masque (deriving from classical and Renaissance forms of public ceremonial; there are several instances in The Faerie Queene, but Jonson’s court masques are the most highly developed examples); the debate (perhaps deriving from classical and medieval educational disciplines; the debate between Milton’s Comus and the Lady draws on this method of public disputation); the emblem (a pictorial allegory accompanied by an explanation in verse; Francis Quarles’s Emblems was a very popular example of the fashion for emblem books, which was initiated in the sixteenth century by the Italian Alciati).

Modern readers must learn how to read an allegory. They must discern the kind of allegory it is, and the levels of meaning it contains; they must recognise allegory when it is there, and avoid imposing it falsely when it is not. They face two different dangers: of neglecting or undervaluing allegorical meanings that are present in a work, and of inventing meanings that are inappropriate to it. Sometimes nonexistent clues are picked up; sometimes the author’s provocation of the reader is deliberately ironic. Marvell is an example of an author who has been badly served by modern readers clumsily misapplying techniques of allegorical interpretation; a poem like ‘Upon Appleton House’ plays delicately with the idea of allegory, yet it has had weighty political and religious meanings tactlessly forced on it. On the whole, however, allegorical works provide their readers with enough clues about their nature to provoke them into the appropriate allegorical interpretation.

BIBLICAL PRECEDENTS FOR ALLEGORY AND THEIR USE

1 And it came to pass, when Moses came down from mount Sinai with the two tables of testimony in Moses’ hand…that Moses wist not that the skin of his face shone while he talked with [God].

And when Aaron and all the children of Israel saw Moses, behold, the skin of his face shone; and they were afraid to come nigh him.

……

And till Moses had done speaking with them, he put a veil on his face.

But when Moses went in before the Lord to speak with him, he took the veil off, until he came out. And he came out, and spake unto the children of Israel that which he was commanded.

And the children of Israel saw the face of Moses, that the skin of Moses’ face shone: and Moses put the veil upon his face again, until he went in to speak with him.

Exodus 34:29–30, 33–5

2 And the disciples came, and said unto him, Why speakest thou unto them in parables?

He answered and said unto them, Because it is given unto you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it is not given.

For whosoever hath, to him shall be given, and he shall have more abundance: but whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken away even that he hath.

Therefore speak I to them in parables: because they seeing see not; and hearing they hear not, neither do they understand.

Matthew 13:10–13

3 For we know in part, and we prophesy in part.

But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away.

When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.

For now we see through a glass [i.e. in a mirror], darkly: but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.

I Corinthians 13:9–12

4 But to go higher, did not our Saviour himself speak in parables? as that divine parable of the sower, that comfortable parable of the prodigal son, that dreadful parable of Dives and Lazarus, though I know of this last many of the fathers hold that it is a story indeed and no parable. But in the rest it is manifest that he [that] was all holiness, all wisdom, all truth, used parables, and even such as discreet poets use, where a good and honest and wholesome allegory is hidden in a pleasant and pretty fiction; and therefore for that part of poetry of imitation, I think nobody will make any question but it is not only allowable, but godly and commendable, if the poet’s ill handling of it do not mar and pervert the good use of it.

Harington Preface to Orlando Furioso

5 Solidity, indeed becomes the pen

Of him that writeth things divine to men;

But must I needs want solidness, because

By metaphors I speak; was not God’s laws,

His Gospel-laws in olden time held forth

By types, shadows, and metaphors?

……

Be not too forward therefore to conclude

That I want solidness, that I am rude:

All things solid in show not solid be;

All things in parables despise not we

Lest things most hurtful lightly we receive;

And things that good are, of our souls bereave.

My dark and cloudy words they do but hold

The truth, as cabinets enclose the gold.

The prophets used much by metaphors

To set forth truth: yea, who so considers

Christ, his Apostles too, shall plainly see,

That truths to this day in such mantles be.

Am I afraid to say that Holy Writ,

Which for its style and phrase puts down all wit,

Is everywhere so full of all these things,

(Dark figures, allegories), yet there springs

From that same book that lustre and those rays

Of light that turns our darkest nights to days.

Bunyan The Pilgrim’s Progress The Author’s Apology for his Book’

6 Through that pure Virgin-shrine

That sacred veil drawn o’ er thy glorious noon

That men might look and live as glow-worms shine,

And face the moon:

Wise Nicodemus saw such light

As made him know his God by night.

Most blest believer he!

Who in that land of darkness and blind eyes

Thy long expected healing wings could see,

When thou didst rise,

And what can never more be done,

Did at midnight speak with the sun!

……

There is in God (some say)

A deep, but dazzling darkness; As men here

Say it is late and dusky, because they

See not all clear;

O for that night! where I in him

Might live invisible and dim.

Vaughan ‘The Night’ ll. 1–12, 49–54 (Vaughan habitually uses the veil as an image of the Incarnation.)

SOME THEORIES OF ALLEGORY

7 It is obvious that anything that is gained with fatigue seems sweeter than what is acquired without any effort. The plain truth, since it is quickly understood with little difficulty, delights us and passes from the mind. But, in order that it may be more pleasing, because acquired with labour, and therefore be better retained, the poets hide the truth beneath things apparently quite contrary to it. For that reason they produce fables, rather than some other covering, because their beauty attracts those whom neither philosophical demonstrations nor persuasions would have been able to allure. What then shall we say about the poets? Shall we hold that they are madmen, as their senseless adversaries, saying they know not what, have thought them? Certainly not; on the contrary they employ in their productions the most profound thought, which is equivalent to everything hidden in the fruit, and admirable and splendid language, which corresponds to the rind and the leaves.

Boccaccio The Life of Dante xxii

8 When things perfectly clear seem obscure, it is the beholder’s fault. To a half-blind man, even when the sun is shining its brightest, the sky looks cloudy. Some things are naturally so profound that not without difficulty can the most exceptional keenness in intellect sound their depths; like the sun’s globe, by which, before they can clearly discern it, strong eyes are sometimes repelled. On the other hand, some things, though naturally clear perhaps, are so veiled by the artist’s skill that scarcely anyone could by mental effort derive sense from them; as the immense body of the sun when hidden in clouds cannot be exactly located by the eye of the most learned astronomer. That some of the prophetic poems are in this class, I do not deny.

Yet not by this token is it fair to condemn them; for surely it is not of the poet’s various functions to rip up and lay bare the meaning which lies hidden in his inventions. Rather where matters truly solemn and memorable are too much exposed, it is his office by every effort to protect as well as he can and remove them from the gaze of the irreverent, that they cheapen not by too common familiarity. So when he discharges this duty and does it ingeniously, the poet earns commendation, not anathema.

Wherefore I again grant that poets are at times obscure, but invariably explicable if approached by a sane mind; for these cavillers view them with owl eyes, not human. Surely no one can believe that poets invidiously veil the truth with fiction, either to deprive the reader of the hidden sense, or to appear the more clever; but rather to make truths which would otherwise cheapen by exposure the object of strong intellectual effort and various interpretation, that in ultimate discovery they shall be more precious.

Boccaccio Genealogy of the Pagan Gods XIV xii

9 Parables have been used in two ways, and (which is strange) for contrary purposes. For they serve to disguise and veil the meaning, and they serve also to clear and throw light upon it…. In the old times, when the inventions and conclusions of human reason (even those that are now trite and vulgar) were as yet new and strange, the world was full of all kinds of fables, and enigmas, and parables, and similitudes: and these were used not as a device for shadowing and concealing the meaning, but as a method of making it understood; the understandings of men being then rude and impatient of all subtleties that did not address themselves to the sense,—indeed scarcely capable of them. For as hieroglyphics came before letters, so parables came before arguments.

Bacon Of the Wisdom of the Ancients

10 The ancient poets have indeed wrapped as it were in their writings divers and sundry meanings, which they call the senses or mysteries thereof. First of all for the literal sense (as it were the utmost bark or rine [i.e. rind]) they set down in manner of an history the acts and notable exploits of some persons worthy memory: then in the same fiction, as a second rine and somewhat more fine, as it were nearer to the pith and marrow, they place the moral sense profitable for the active life of man, approving virtuous actions and condemning the contrary. Many times also under the selfsame words they comprehend some true understanding of natural philosophy, or sometimes of politic government, and now and then of divinity: and these same senses that comprehend so excellent knowledge we call the allegory, which Plutarch defineth to be when one thing is told, and by that another is understood… The men of greatest learning and highest wit in the ancient times did of purpose conceal these deep mysteries of learning, and, as it were, cover them with the veil of fables and verse for sundry causes: one cause was that they might not be rashly abused by profane wits, in whom science is corrupted, like good wine in a bad vessel; another cause why they wrote in verse was conservation of the memory of their precepts, as we see yet the general rules almost of every art, not so much as husbandry, but they are oftener recited and better remembered in verse than in prose; another, and a principal cause of all, is to be able with one kind of meat and one dish (as I may so call it) to feed divers tastes. For the weaker capacities will feed themselves with the pleasantness of the history and sweetness of the verse, some that have stronger stomachs will as it were take a further taste of the moral sense, a third sort, more high conceited than they, will digest the allegory: so as indeed it hath been thought by men of very good judgement, such manner of poetical writing was an excellent way to preserve all kind of learning from that corruption which now it is come to since they left that mystical writing of verse.

Harington Preface to Orlando Furioso

ALLEGORY IN ‘THE FAERIE QUEENE’

11 Sir, knowing how doubtfully all allegories may be construed, and this book of mine, which I have entitled The Faerie Queene, being a continued allegory, or dark conceit, I have thought good, as well for avoiding of jealous opinions and misconstructions, as also for your better light in reading thereof (being so by you commanded), to discover unto you the general intention and meaning, which in the whole course thereqf I have fashioned, without expressing of any particular purposes, or by accidents, therein occasioned. The general end therefore of all the book is to fashion a gentleman or noble person in virtuous and gentle discipline: Which for that I conceived should be most plausible and pleasing, being coloured with an historical fiction, the which the most part of men delight to read, rather for variety of matter than for profit of the ensample, I chose the history of King Arthur…

To some, I know, this method will seem displeasant, which had rather have good discipline delivered plainly in way of precepts, or sermoned at large, as they use, than thus cloudily enwrapped in allegorical devices. But such, me seem, should be satisfied with the use of these days, seeing all things accounted by their shows, and nothing esteemed of, that is not delightful and pleasing to common sense.

Spenser Letter to Sir Walter Ralegh (appended to The Faerie Queene)

12 And thou, O fairest Princess under sky!

In this fair mirror mayest behold thy face,

And thine own realms in land of Faery,

And in this antique image thy great ancestry.

The which O! pardon me thus to enfold

In covert veil, and wrap in shadows light,

That feeble eyes your glory may behold,

Which else could not endure those beamès bright,

But would be dazzled with exceeding light.

Spenser The Faerie Queene Proem to Book II stanzas 4–5

13 And if ought else, great bards beside,

In sage and solemn tunes have sung,

Of tourneys and of trophies hung;

Of forests, and enchantments drear,

Where more is meant than meets the ear.

Milton Il Penseroso ll. 116–20

14 Spenser in what he saith hath a way of expression peculiar to himself, he bringeth down the highest and deepest mysteries that are contained in human learning to an easy and gentle form of delivery—which showeth he is master of what he treateth of, he can wield it as he pleaseth. And he hath done this so cunningly that if one heed him not with great attention, rare and wonderful conceptions will unperceived slide by him that readeth his works, and he will think he hath met with nothing but familiar and easy discourses; but let one dwell awhile upon them and he shall feel a strange fullness and roundness in all he saith. The most generous wines tickle the palate least, but they are no sooner in the stomach but by their warmth and strength there, they discover what they are; and those streams that steal away with least noise are usually deepest and most dangerous to pass over.

Kenelm Digby ‘Concerning Spenser’