The Cambridge Companion to Allegory

This book traces the development of allegory in the European and American tradition from antiquity to the modern era.

Rita Copeland (Edited by), Peter T. Struck (Edited by)

9780521862295, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 25 March 2010

324 pages, 5 b/w illus.
23.5 x 15.6 x 2 cm, 0.65 kg

'This is indeed a strong and well-edited collection, with individual essays that are useful to the teacher, as well as a larger narrative that, by tracing the development of the different, interrelated meanings of allegory, clarifies a complex and ever evolving literary-intellectual tradition.' Journal of English and Germanic Philology

Allegory is a vast subject, and its knotty history is daunting to students and even advanced scholars venturing outside their own historical specializations. This Companion will present, lucidly, systematically, and expertly, the various threads that comprise the allegorical tradition over its entire chronological range. Beginning with Greek antiquity, the volume shows how the earliest systems of allegory developed in poetry dealing with philosophy, mystical religion, and hermeneutics. Once the earliest histories and themes of the allegorical tradition have been presented, the volume turns to literary, intellectual, and cultural manifestations of allegory through the Middle Ages and Renaissance. The essays in the last section address literary and theoretical approaches to allegory in the modern era, from reactions to allegory in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to reevaluations of its power in the thought of the twentieth century and beyond.

Introduction Rita Copeland and Peter T. Struck
Part I. Ancient Foundations: 1. Early Greek allegory Dirk Obbink
2. Hellenistic allegory and early imperial rhetoric Glenn W. Most
3. Origen as theorist of allegory: Alexandrian contexts Daniel Boyarin
Part II. Philosophy, Theology, and Poetry 200 to 1200: 4. Allegory and ascent in Neoplatonism Peter T. Struck
5. Allegory in Christian late antiquity Denys Turner
6. Allegory in Islamic literatures Peter Heath
7. Twelfth-century allegory: philosophy and imagination Jon Whitman
Part III. Literary Allegory: Philosophy and Figuration: 8. Allegory in the Roman de la Rose Kevin Brownlee
9. Dante and allegory Albert R. Ascoli
10. Medieval secular allegory: French and English Stephanie Gibbs Kamath and Rita Copeland
11. Medieval religious allegory: French and English Nicolette Zeeman
12. Renaissance allegory from Petrarch to Spenser Michael Murrin
13. Protestant allegory Brian Cummings
14. Allegorical drama Blair Hoxby
Part IV. The Fall and Rise of Allegory: 15. Romanticism's errant allegory Theresa M. Kelley
16. American allegory Deborah L. Madsen
17. Walter Benjamin's concept of allegory Howard Cagill
18. Hermeneutics, deconstruction, allegory Steven Mailloux
19. Allegory happens: allegory and the arts post-1960 Lynette Hunter.

Subject Areas: Literature: history & criticism [DS], Literature & literary studies [D]