Guynn offers an innovative new approach to the ethical, cultural, and ideological analysis of medieval allegory. Working between poststructuralism and historical materialism, he considers both the playfulness of allegory (its openness to multiple interpretations and perspectives) and its disciplinary force (the use of rhetoric to naturalize hegemonies and suppress difference and dissent). Ultimately, he argues that both tendencies can be linked to the consolidation of power within ruling class institutions and the persecution of demonized others, notably women and sexual minorities. (...) The book examines a number of centrally canonical works, including the verse romance Eneas , Alan of Lille’s De planctu Naturae , The Romance of the Rose , and the Querelle de la Rose. (shrink)

Fish Night, an episode of LOVE DEATH + ROBOTS (S01E12, 2019) based on a 1982 short story by Joe R. Lansdale, can be interpreted as an allegory of the impossibility of immersive experience: if real, it is deadly, because the images are no longer such or ghosts but living beings present in a shared environmental habitat, acting with but also against the subject, in turn no longer a spectator. Comparing the story and film, and ancient ekphrastic literature, I discuss, in (...) a trans-medial imaginary genealogical perspective, the symptoms of this cultural topos and of the regressive desire for immersion and for transparent immediacy that shapes and drives it, dwelling in particular on the ambivalent phenomenological and ontological relations between living bodies, pictures and media as deep time-bending. (shrink)

Bringing allegory into the light from the neglect into which it fell means focusing on the wondrous heights of the human spirit in its significance for culture. Contemporary philosophies and literary theories, which give pre-eminence to primary linguistics forms (symbol and metaphor), seem to favor just that which makes intelligible communication possible. But they fall short in accounting for the deepest subliminal founts that prompt the mind to exalt in beauty, virtue, transcending aspiration. The present, rich collection shows how allegory, (...) incorporating the soaring of the spirit, offers highlights for culture, with its fluctuations and transformation. This collective effort, rich in ideas and intuitions and covering a vast range of cultural manifestations, is a pioneering work, retrieving the vision of the exalted human spirit, bringing together literature, theatre, music and painting in a variety of revealing perspectives. The authors include: M. Kronegger, Ch. Raffini, J. Smith, J.B. Williamson, H. Ross, M.F. Wagner, F. Divorne, L. Oppenheim, D.K. Heckerl, N. Campi de Castro, P. Saurez Pascual, M. Alfaro Amieiro, H. Fletcher Thompson, R.J. Wilson III, and A. Stensaas. For specialists, students and workers in philosophy, comparative literature, aesthetic phenomenologists and historians of art. (shrink)

How closely do the theoretical notions of 'metaphor' and 'allegory' developed by ancient rhetoricians reflect the practice of classical writers? This question is tackled through eleven new essays by a team of distinguished academics. Ancient theories of metaphor are compared with twentieth century alternatives; theory is tested against practice; and allegory - a distinctive though neglected feature of ancient literature and philosophy - is explored against the background of the rhetoricians' claim that it is one form of metaphor.

This chapter contains section titled: I II III IV V VI.

Explores the use of allegory in the writing of the renowned 11th- century Muslim philosopher known in the West as Avicenna, showing how it fit into the tradition of Islamic allegory, and has influenced later developments in the East and West. His Mi'rag Nama is translated here as a prime example of the journey allegory. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR.

The use or Puritan allegory is what lifts "The Last Hurrah," "By Love Possessed," "Invisible Man," and "Herzog" to the level of serious and lasting importance.

In recent years, there has been a growing interest in the geographies of electronic waste (e-waste). Several studies have examined how e-waste is increasingly exported to processing sites in China, India, Pakistan, Ghana and elsewhere across the global south, where it leads to devastating health effects. Through an interdisciplinary patchwork of human geography, public health, narrative theory, and philosophies of memory, this paper seeks to show how the export of e-waste to the global south—and the toxins it brings along with (...) it—is part of what makes “resilient” urban growth and citizenship possible elsewhere, particularly in the San Francisco Bay Area. The surplus value of technological production is only recuperable, in places like Silicon Valley, if its toxicity is spatially and temporally displaced onto— and hidden within— surplus bodies who are cast into necropolitical terrains of ill- health and danger. Tracing this story of e-waste, which spans from the epigenetic to the geopolitical, from the San Francisco Bay Area to China’s Greater Bay Area, requires a method of empirical allegory that can detect global iniquities on the most granular of scales, and vice versa. (shrink)

We usually think of philosophy as the production of theories and arguments. Yet there are other sides to philosophy, the recognition of which is necessary to understand its wider personal and cultural significance. Some of these sides are seldom acknowledged as philosophical at all, perhaps because literature has appropriated what professional philosophy unfortunately has lost. One philosophical activity often overlooked is the construction of philosophical allegories: to describe one's life in explicit philosophical terms or philosophically suggestive ways. Reading life (...) allegorically is to recognize philosophy in what seems merely details of the whole picture and to develop a sense for how philosophical constellations are mirrored in one's life, no matter how ordinary that life may seem. As a theoretical position skepticism is sometimes stated by saying that we are in a prison from which we cannot escape. What if one had actually been in some kind of prison, say, a home or a university, and then described that episode so that the skeptical picture is revealed in the description? That would be what I call an autobiographical philosophical allegory: a part of one's life is sublimated into a picture of the human condition. To attain as much, the episode need not be imbued with philosophical significance at the time—it may have felt utterly ordinary or utterly private. Yet the telling of it can make it extraordinary and promote it into a philosophical piece. In the following, I shall elucidate the concept of philosophical allegory through a reading of some episodes in Jean-Jacques Rousseau's autobiographical works. (shrink)

In a wide-ranging study, Josh Cohen argues that the American fixation with image - literally celebrating the surface, the visual, the spectacular spaces of the cinema and the city - has produced a crisis of literary perception, with crucial cultural and political consequences.

The aim of the article is to clarify the basic perspective that Immagini cristiane e cultura antica adopted to read the relationship between early Christian iconographic production – the main subject of the book – and the development of the forms of later figurative art, as well as the path leading to modern aesthetics.For this purpose, the article compares the positions of Auerbach – that had an explicit influence on the book – with those of Benjamin, regarding the different ways (...) in which the two Berliner authors interpreted the meaning and the function of allegory. In Auerbach, allegory is understood as the past of the figura whose logic, according to Immagini cristiane e cultura antica, underlies not only the Christian literary production of the first centuries, but also the figurative one. In Benjamin, conversely, allegory is understood as the future of the figura, followed to the definitive crisis of Christian messianism. (shrink)

In now classic article, James Clifford offers a novel perspective on ethnographic texts. Inspired by literary studies he uses contemporary ethnographic works to question ethnography’s claims of scientific objectivity and a clear distinction between allegorical and factual. If ethnography aims to keep its contemporary relevance, it should specifically focus on allegory as an intrinsic quality of ethnographic texts This kind of analysis may assume that any ethnographic text accounts for facts and events but at the same time it tackles the (...) moral, ideological or even cosmological issues. According to Clifford, ethnography has been dominated by a “pastoral” allegorical register which allowed an ethnographer to occupy a privileged position to interpret other, non-writing cultures. Clifford notices that this register is loosing support in the modern world since the difference between illiterate and literate cultures is not relevant anymore. Ethnographic pastoral is now replaced with self-reflexive and dialogical forms of ethnographic writing, analyzed by Clifford by the example of Marjorie Shostak’s book Nisa: The Life and Words of a!Kung Woman. (shrink)

For much of human history knowledge was communicated orally. Moral understandings were shared, developed and contextualized from generation to generation. Current moral theorists have argued that storied accounts may better serve to motivate ethical action and engage emotionally than standalone arguments. Over the years I found myself developing a story – which I spoke aloud to students in my introductory classes when we are starting work on non-human animal ethics, altering it and layering on elements year after year. Below is (...) a written version. (shrink)

Dans une perspective de lecture attentive aux stratégies rhétoriques et poétiques de la sagesse antique, nous traitons de rondeaux, de refrains, de rythmes, de fugues et d’allégories. Sans tenir à faire une lecture littéraire ou musicale des fragments du Poème sur la Nature d’Empédocle, nous examinons la théorie philosophique et le langage philosophique du philosophe d’Akragas tel qu’il est construit intrinsèquement par son langage poétique. Le cycle incessant qui alterne l’amour et la haine se déploie dans des ritournelles qui se (...) répètent régulièrement. Les images du monde se transforment allégoriquement dans un processus continu toujours repéré par un schème de quatre figures, dont les êtres, les matériaux, les racines ou les dieux ne sont pas des principes ni des substrats, mais différentes expressions d’un monde en changement perpétuel. Nous confrontons ainsi la vulgate d’Aristote qui parle d’éléments chez Empédocle comme des principes matériels et proposons de lire son poème comme ayant une visée du multiple, qui exprime un monde dionysiaque dont la nature n’a aucune face en dessous des masques qu’elle change. (shrink)

This article reconsiders the relations between Immanuel Kant and Michel Foucault’s essays on the Enlightenment and adds Giorgio Agamben’s essay “What is an Apparatus?” to this constellation. It explores, specifically, the relations between Foucault’s definition of enlightenment and the central notion of Agamben’s philosophy: potentiality. The relation between potentiality and enlightenment is then mobilized in the article in the context of a discussion of technology in Kant, Foucault, and Agamben. What might be the relevance of the relation between Foucault’s enlightenment (...) and Agamben’s potentiality for our understanding of technological developments today? The article engages with this question through a discussion of Foucault’s writings on the care of the self, Agamben’s theory of art, and Bernard Stiegler’s work on technology. It closes with a discussion of an artwork that stages the dramatic relation between all of these texts. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Allegory and the Spaces of LoveOscar Martín (bio)Writing about Spanish sentimental fiction from 1450 to 1550 is not an easy task, as we are discussing a genre with a difficult theoretical configuration. The investigation of sentimental fiction, however, has been sorting out the classifications that applied to a hodgepodge of works previously labeled as “sentimental novel” (“novela sentimental”). This label, once attached uncritically to a bunch of heterogeneous texts (...) that shared such intangibles as “loving focus” or “prevalence of psychological description over narratives,” has been applied more consistently nowaday, thanks in part to the scholarly efforts started in the 1980s like those of Martínez Jiménez and Muñoz Marquina (1982), and Martínez Latre (1989).1 Using some of these research efforts, Alan Deyermond has codified the genre accurately:Brevity; focus on psychological interest over external action; a tragic vision of love; autobiography (first-person narration or a narrator as a character) and the insertion of letters or poems (or, often, both) into the narration.[77]2Within this scholarly categorization, Regula Rohland de Langbehn has been pivotal in offering—first in 1986, and more recently in 1999—a threefold scheme in the development of the genre she labels as “sentimental novel”: a first group chronologically of the genre would be represented by Siervo libre de amor and Sátira de felice e infelice vida, both works marked by the influence of cancionero poetry—specially in the allegorical structuring and in the characterization of love, and by other subjects being limited to an abstract and general analysis of emotions. Both works also present a debate over the moral value of love. A second group would gravitate around Triste deleytacion and the works of Diego de San Pedro and Juan de Flores, works that show a wider range of topics and the impact of a broader generic textuality like cancionero poetry and such chivalric novels as Tirant. Finally, she distinguishes a third group whose main characteristic is the imprint of Celestina’s influence on both the narrative surface and its thematic approach. In the same vein, Vicenta Blay Manzanera has taken up this threefold scheme, dividing the genre into “the creation of the paradigm” (“la creación del paradigma”) the climactic stage, and the downfall and disarticulation of the narrative sentimental system” (“la fase climática” and “el tercero la fase de declive o desintegración del paradigma”) [“La conciencia genérica” 221]. [End Page 132]Just as Rohland de Langbehn’s works had at least settled down the arguments about the existence of a sentimental novelistic genre, however, medieval Hispanic scholarship has been shaken by an entrenched debate over not only the identification of this genre (novel or fiction) but whether the genre even existed at all. It was Antonio Cortijo Ocaña who, while editing a critical cluster in La Corónica on sentimental fiction, opened the door to some scholars such as Weissberger who voiced their skepticism over the generic nature of sentimental prose, a skepticism already present in an innovative volume published by Gwara and Gerli in 1997. This skeptical position was also supported by Cortijo Ocaña himself, who in 2001 published a monumental work in which, although using the generic term as a departure point, he ended up suggesting the difficulty of defining it, therefore jettisoning it. This position in turn was contested by Rohland de Langbehn, who in 2002 defended the validity of both the existence of a genre and its name novela sentimental, a position that has sparked a new round of replies in a La Corónica forum in 2003.In this debate, I would join today’s minority position on the existence of a sentimental genre, because, as I explained in my 2001 review of Rohland de Langbehn’s book and as I find convincingly argued in her 2002 contribution, there are internal traits within sentimental fictional texts that do not appear together in other sentimental generic texts [139]. In addition, once we take into account the obvious intertextuality of those sentimental texts, as Blay Manzanera has shown [“La conciencia genérica”], and the overutilization of central motifs in the configuration of love’s debate, we... (shrink)

The idea that mythos and logos are incompatible, and that truth is a product of scientific and dialectical thinking, was certainly disproven by later Platonic philosophers. Deploying the works of Hesiod and Homer, Homeric Hymns and other such literature, they considered myth a valuable and significant augment to philosophical discourse. Plato’s denigration of myth gave his followers an incentive to read myth as allegory. The Stoics and first-century philosophers such as Philo, treated allegory as a legitimate interpretive strategy. The Middle (...) Platonists incorporated myth, for example, deifying the Monad and Dyad, as did 2nd century Platonists. Plutarch’s Isis and Osiris, for example, equates Isis and Osiris with form and matter: the god sows in matter logoi from himself. Porphyry’s allegorizing of Plato’s Cave of the Nymphs is another example. Plotinus is a strong influence on how the late Neoplatonists regarded myth. This paper argues that these philosophers’ use of allegory prepared the way for the Neoplatonists treatment of myth as inspired symbolism. Proclus and Syrianus, as reported by Hermias, did something more extreme by using mythology to construct inspired symbolic argument. Mythos becomes another type of logos, a vehicle for representing the invisible world of being, another kind of truth that can even serve a function in anagogic ascent. (shrink)

When faith traditions confront postmodern uncertainties regarding historical liturgical practices, political and cultural ideologies, the self and sacred space, the assurance of truth claims, allegorical readings and interpretations of sites where divine presence is found are equally questioned. Can allegorical interpretations offer a valuable strategy in postmodern understandings for identifying how Divine presence is embodied? One possibility is to discover how two Anglican women embody their faith community’s via media and in turn these women may be read as an “open (...) icon.” To provide contrasting views, Orthodox Icons are particularly noted for their allegorical certainties that identify and point with sharp clarification to Tradition and the Church’s sacramental understandings. An allegorical frame “closes” the Orthodox icon. In a postmodern view, allegory “opens” said frame to a vast horizontal landscape that discovers spaces, places, and persons in which the Holy Spirit works mysteriously and unexpectedly. Both Evelyn Underhill and Barbara Brown Taylor writing almost a century apart and each encountering their respective historical reactions to “modernism,” trace the margins of their faith along the Anglican understanding of the via media. In doing so, both suggest the notion of “open” icon—the body itself. (shrink)

This article explores the opportunities afforded by Ursula Le Guin’s allegory ‘The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas’ for thinking about the role of youth work in modern cities and societies that are deemed to be successful but at the same time fail some young people. Using Melbourne and Australia as examples and following Le Guin the case is made that the prosperity of ‘liveable’ cities and ‘lucky’ countries coincides with the neglect and mistreatment of some young people. The same (...) cultural, economic and political practices and processes that produce the beauty and abundance also produce the inequalities and hardships, and these include policies inspired by neoliberalism, processes of individualisation, and utilitarianism. Unlike the ones who walk away from Omelas youth workers can stay and fight adversity and injustice, however alleviating problems young people experience is more complex than it is often thought to be. One reason this is the case is because youth work is entangled with the same range of ethical, emotional, intellectual, political, and economic circumstances that generate thriving places and disadvantaged young lives, and inadvertently youth workers can reproduce the challenging and limiting conditions faced by some young people. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Rhetoric 35.4 (2002) 267-296 [Access article in PDF] Allegory and Democratic Public Culture in the Postmodern Era Robert Hariman The man lies on the hotel bed, clad only in his underwear, as he watches the TV screen just beyond his feet. His right hand holds the remote control, which he uses to scan through the cable channels. To his left sits Abraham Lincoln, clothed in long-sleeved white (...) shirt and black pants and reading a book. Lincoln's long, angular frame is just a bit stooped, and his brow is slightly furrowed, as if long accustomed to thinking on the edge of melancholy. Lincoln is mulling over a statement by Walter Benjamin: "Allegories are, in the realm of thoughts, what ruins are in the realm of things" (Benjamin 1977, 178). 1Seated to the man's right is a woman wearing the terry cloth bathrobe provided by the hotel. She leans slightly forward, legs crossed, as she reads the New York Times Magazine cover story about President Clinton. "Listen to this," she says with a bemused smile. "In the clutter around his desk in the Oval Office stands not a single bust of a favorite predecessor, but five: Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Truman and two of F.D.R., plus a statuette of Will Rogers for good measure. If governing is choosing, this collection is a metaphor for this President's trouble with choices, and he himself allows, 'That's the story of my Presidency, that desk'" (Purdum 1996, 36).The man says nothing as he continues to watch the succession of images on the screen: a lizard flicks its tongue in the desert heat; a child in a stroller laughs as she holds a strawberry ice cream cone; a congressman in blue suit, white shirt, and red tie jabs his finger into the air as he talks earnestly; cars plastered with automotive product logos curl around a race track; Fred and Ginger swirl around the dance floor; soldiers wade ashore at Omaha Beach; the Space Shuttle lifts off; Groucho lifts his eyebrows; Regis smiles; mushrooms and peppers simmer in a pan.The succession of images could go on indefinitely. The tableau remains static. The composition is an allegory: a figural presentation that organizes multiple interpretations regarding collective experience. It also contains and comments on other forms of itself: Clinton's desk is an example [End Page 267] of the figural anecdote that has been a staple of American public address. The manifold of televisual images exemplifies the allegorical encoding that operates within postmodern art forms, including fragmentary appropriation, paratactic association, encyclopedic range, and non-linear temporality. The statement by Benjamin illuminates the nature of allegory in a specific genre and historical period, and as it is a general mode of representation, and perhaps as it is a model for all textual interpretation.The composition also evokes a set of dialectical tensions that are characteristic of both allegory in general and fundamental anxieties in the contemporary period. Past and present sit side by side, but incongruously, as if by artifice alone. So it is also with the print and visual media, which are held together by mutual competencies but otherwise in figural isolation that perhaps represents different destinies. Likewise, one might wonder about the peculiar relationship between public affairs and private life: the succession of images on the screen adhere to no hierarchy of values, no principle of loyalty or sacrifice, no basis for discerning obligations or maintaining rights, yet they are replete with the paraphernalia of these concerns, and the arrangement of figures in the room likewise is at once suggestive yet inconclusive. If this tableau contains familiar features of the mass-mediated experience that now saturates American politics, one might wonder: Is the democratic tradition in ruins?Allegories give us dynamic juxtapositions in a static frame. This principle of composition seems particularly suited to periods of cultural change. To the extent that the genre of allegory has a history, it is one of eternal recurrence at periods of loss and fragmentation produced by the expansion of a new, somewhat... (shrink)

How can stories contribute to ethical education, when they reach people who have already been shaped by many stories, including ethically problematic ones? This question is pursued here by considering Plato’s allegory of the cave, focusing on a reading of it offered by Jonathan Lear. Lear claims that the cave allegory aims to undermine its audience’s inheritance of stories. I question the possibility and desirability of that project, especially in relation to ethical education. Some works of contemporary fiction by Jenny (...) Erpenbeck and J. M. Coetzee are discussed as stories that use more complex strategies for ethically constructive engagement with story-saturated audiences. (shrink)

This essay aims to shed new light on the stages of moral enlightenment in the Allegory of the Cave, of which there are three. I focus on the two stages within the cave, represented by eikasia and pistis, and provide a phenomenological description of these two mental states. The second part of the essay argues that there is a structural parallelism between the Allegory of the Cave and the ending of the Republic. The parallelism can be convincingly demonstrated by a (...) purely formal analysis, but additionally it complements and reinforces the original interpretation of the Cave, insofar as the ending of the Republic also mirrors, on the level of content, the previously adduced stages of moral enlightenment. (shrink)

In the Social Contract, the model for the structural description of textuality derives from the incompatibility between the formulation and the application of the law, reiterating the estrangement that exists between the sovereign as an active, and the State as a static, principle. The distinction, which is not a polarity, can therefore also be phrased in terms of the difference between political action and political prescription. The tension between figural and grammatical language is duplicated in the differentiation between the State (...) as a defined entity and the State as a principle of action or, in linguistic terms, between the constative and the performative function of language. A text is defined by the necessity of considering a statement, at the same time, as performative and constative, and the logical tension between figure and grammar is repeated in the impossibility of distinguishing between two linguistic functions which are not necessarily compatible. It seems that as soon as a text knows what it states, it can only act deceptively, like the thieving lawmaker in the Social Contract, and if a text does not act, it cannot state what it knows. The distinction between a text as narrative and a text as theory also belongs to this field of tension. Paul de Man, Tripp Professor in the humanities and chairman of the French department of Yale University, is the author of Blindness and Insight: Essays in the Rhetoric of Contemporary Criticism. His forthcoming study of the theory of figural language, of which this essay will be a part, centers on Rousseau and involves as well Rilke, Proust, and Nietzsche. He has also contributed "The Epistemology of Metaphor" to Critical Inquiry. (shrink)

Culture Control Critique is an attempt to address the current crisis in cultural critique, situate it in relation to what it sees as a powerful tendency toward political allegory in contemporary Anglo-American mainstream culture, and analyse how this tendency can be understood in relation to the totalizing tendencies of control society.

This volume shows how late medieval dream-poetry explored problems arising from the reception of Aristotle's philosophical work concerning human knowledge. Marco Nievergelt explores how the work of three medieval poets in the genre of allegorical fiction addressed these problems in distinctive, non-academic terms.

«A genuine literary treatment of the soul» is what Eugenio Massa called the brief section of Egidio of Viterbo’s Sentences Commentary that he published in 1954. What Massa published is Egidio’s discussion of part of Peter Lombard’s third distinction in Book I, which bears the title «De imagine et similitudine Trinitatis in anima humana». The main topic at so early a place in the Sentences is not, strictly speaking, the human soul but the divine Trinity. The point of departure is (...) Lombard’s consideration of the soul as analogous to the Trinity; and behind that connection lies Augustine, who presented the soul as an image of the Trinity because he saw in the soul a unity and simplicity of substance but also Platonism’s tripartite divisions. These include, for example, the appetitive, emotional, and rational functions, from the Republic, and Augustine’s subdivision of the rational functions into memory, understanding, and will. This connection between Trinity and human soul, however, gave commentators excellent opportunities not only for theology, discourse about God, but also for psychology, the study of the soul. Descriptions of the human soul initially offered in the theological context became important in their own right. According to Massa, in light of the soul’s being created in God’s image, Egidio was able to make human dignity the major theme even at this early point in the commentary. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Frühmittelalterliche Studien Jahrgang: 49 Heft: 1 Seiten: 165-202.

Critics of the proposal that the Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer used the camera obscura extensively in making his pictures of domestic scenes have argued that this cannot be the case, since his compositions are not 'photographic snapshots' but are very finely judged and balanced; his subject matter draws on the traditional motifs of Dutch genre painting; and the pictures are filled with complex allegorical and symbolic meaning. In this paper it is argued that all these are indeed characteristics of Vermeer's (...) oeuvre, but that the artist produced them through the transcription of optical images of tableaux, set up by arranging real furniture and other 'props' with extreme care, in an actual room in his mother-in-law's house. (shrink)