Allegory and Modernity in English Literature c. 1575-1675 by Vladimir Brljak

405 Pages·2015·5.66 MB·English

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Allegory and Modernity in English Literature
c
. 1575-1675

by

Vladimir Brljak

A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy in English and Comparative Literary Studies

University of Warwick
Department of English and Comparative Literary Studies
April 2015
CONTENTS

Figures and Tables 2
Acknowledgments 3
Declaration 5
Summary 6
Abbreviations and Conventions 7

Introduction: Allegory and Modernity 9
Chapter One: Allegory and Poetics 46
Chapter Two: Allegory and Drama 133
Chapter Three: Allegory and Epic 228
Afterword: (Neo)Allegory and (Anti)Modernity 329

Bibliography 356
FIGURES AND TABLES

Figure 1. Analysis of three trends in sixteenth-century non-cycle drama. 155

Figure 2. Faustus summoning Mephistopheles. The title page of the first
edition of the B text of Marlowe’s Faustus (London, 1616),
with four later versions of the woodcut. 170

Figure 3. Reconstruction of the staging of Shakespeare’s Hamlet,
1.4.38-5.159. 196

Figure 4. “Alas, poor Ghost!” by G. Cruickshank, illustrating the anecdote
of a prank played on the actor W. Dowton, imagined as
performing the ghost in Hamlet. 197

Figure 5. Mephistopheles as Franciscan friar in The Historie of the Damnable
Life, and deserued Death of Doctor Iohn Faustus (London, 1608). 207

Figure 6. Tables explaining the meanings of God’s attributes in R. Bernard’s
The Bibles Abstract and Epitomie (London, 1642). 247

Figure 7. The schematic representation of the interpretation proposed at
Galatians 4:21-31 in the 1589 edition of T. Beza’s New Testament. 280

Figure 8. Sig. A2r in the fourth (1668) and fifth (1669) “issue” of the first
edition of Milton’s Paradise Lost. 303

Figure 9. The two engravings in the fourth edition of Paradise Lost (London,
1688) objected to by P. Hume in his Annotations (London, 1695)
on the poem. 315

Table 1. Some early English translations of Galatians 4:24, divided into
those which avoid and those which employ the term allegory. 278

2
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This thesis had three supervisors, and is the better for it. Initially, it was supervised by
Catherine Bates and Christina Britzolakis, and when it became clear that it was progressing in
a direction taking it away from Christina’s interests and expertise, Paul Botley stepped in to
replace her. The thesis was thus brought to completion under Catherine’s and Paul’s
supervision, while Christina replaced Elizabeth Clarke as my mentor, and remained associated
with the project in this capacity. I am deeply indebted to all of them, and have long looked
forward to the opportunity to thank them for taking on this thesis, for the time and effort they
have invested in it, for the knowledge they so generously shared, for the intelligence and wit
with which they illuminated our conversations, and for their unwavering professional and
personal support.
Elizabeth’s interest and comments on my work exceeded the duties of a mentor, and
saved me from at least one major blunder. Along with Thomas Docherty, she also acted as the
examiner of my upgrade dossier, and I am thankful for their insightful comments on that
occasion. I am also indebted to other faculty members, as well as the administrative staff, of
the Department of the English and Comparative Literary Studies, especially to Christiania
Whitehead, and to my fellow graduates, including Iman Sheeha, James Christie, Andrea
Selleri, Michael Yat-him Tsang, and especially Joanna Rzepa and Máté Vince.
Beyond Warwick, Ivan Lupić deserves a paragraph to himself here for all his
comments, criticism, encouragement, criticism, advice and assistance, more criticism – in a
word, friendship – over the years.
So does Goran Stanivukovic, who, at a critical moment, and in the most trying of
circumstances, proved himself a model of collegiality and professionalism. I remain deeply
moved and grateful, and always look forward to our paths crossing.
I am further thankful to Irena Bratičević, for her kindness to barbarians; to Helen
Lynch, for her comments, initiative, hospitality, and orientation skills; to Gavin Alexander,
for his suggestions regarding my work on Kenelm Digby, and his collegiality in other matters;
and to Thomas Fulton, for his valuable comments on some of the Milton material.
It is a great pleasure to remember and thank everyone who was involved in the
Allegory Studies? conference, which took place at Warwick on 17 November 2013, and who
made it the extraordinary day that it was. In addition to Catherine, Karen, Iman, James, and
Máté, this includes Sue Dibben at Warwick’s Humanities Research Centre, Karen Lang,
3
Penelope Murray, Lisa Rosenthal, Ery Shin, David Beck, Philip Gaydon, Raymond W. Gibbs,
Jr., Andrew Laird, Marco Nievergelt, Conor Walton, and especially Jon Whitman, to whom I
am also greatly indebted in other respects.
I am further grateful to the members of the Departments of English and Comparative
Literature at the University of Zagreb, including Sonja Bašić, Janja Ciglar-Žanić, Dora
Maček, Tomislav Brlek, and Damir Kalogjera, who opened many doors for me.
A section of Chapter 3 has now been published, with minor additions and alterations,
in The Review of English Studies, n.s., 66 (2015): 403-22. Parts of Chapters 2 and 3 build on
some of the research first published in the collection Milton through the Centuries, ed. Gábor
Ittzés and Miklós Péti (Budapest, 2012), and Notes and Queries, n.s., 57 (2010): 379-80, 59
(2011): 247-54. I am thankful to the editors and reviewers for their comments and
suggestions. Portions of the thesis have also been presented at the following events: 61st
Annual Meeting of the Renaissance Society of America, Berlin, March 2015; 6th Biennial
Conference of the Society for Renaissance Studies, Southampton, July 2014; Research Day in
Medieval English Studies, Piliscsaba, April 2014; 60th Annual Meeting of the Renaissance
Society of America, New York, March 2014; The Middle Ages in the Modern World, St
Andrews, June 2013; Annual Meeting of the American Comparative Literature Association,
Toronto, April 2013; Postgraduate Symposium 2012, Warwick, June 2012; Arts Faculty
Seminar, Warwick, May 2012. I am thankful to everyone who shared in the discussions on
these occasions.
Thanks are also due to the staff of several libraries, including the British Library,
Cambridge University Library, University of Warwick Library, Zagreb’s Faculty of
Humanities and Social Sciences Library, and especially the Bodleian, where much of this
thesis was written.
My studies were funded by a Chancellor’s International Scholarship from the
University of Warwick. I remain grateful for this enormous privilege, and hope that this
thesis, along with other projects undertaken during my time at the University, justifies the
investment. Further support came from Warwick’s Humanities Research Fund and the Open
Society’s Supplementary Grants Programme.
As for more personal debts, they are too extensive, and too personal, to be
acknowledged here, but be it said that nobody has invested more in me than my parents,
Bosiljka and Josip Brljak.

4
DECLARATION

I hereby declare that this thesis is entirely my own work, that is has not been submitted for a
degree at any other university, and that its contents do not form part of any other dissertation
or thesis.

5
SUMMARY

The thesis examines the place of allegory in the literature and intellectual culture of sixteenth-
and seventeenth-century England, especially in its complex and contested relationship to the
notion of the period’s (early) modernity. What is modernity’s quarrel with allegory? Why
does it run so deep in Western thought, and why has it remained with us to the present day?
What specific forms does this quarrel assume in the literary culture of the period now
commonly designated as “early modern”? Why has allegory, under its many names, remained
a point of differentiation and dispute between various sets of ancients and moderns even into
our – some would say “postmodern” – times? Even as scholarship on allegory grows
increasingly comprehensive and sophisticated, commentary on these issues has remained
sporadic and inconclusive, and the thesis seeks to provide a more focused and comprehensive
examination of the subject than has thus far been available.
In terms of its format, the thesis pursues with these concerns through three chapters –
on “Allegory and Poetics”, “Allegory and Drama”, and “Allegory and Epic” – preceded by an
Introduction on “Allegory and Modernity”, and followed by an Afterword on “(Neo)allegory
and (Anti)modernity”. The Introduction and Afterword discuss the broader questions raised
by the allegory-modernity problem, and thus constitute a polemical frame for the three “case
studies” on poetics, drama, and epic, which engage particular sixteenth- and seventeenth-
century texts and traditions. These range from such canonical staples as Sidney’s Defence of
Poesy, Shakespeare’s Hamlet, or Milton’s Paradise Lost to numerous other, less well known,
but no less important works.
In reconsidering the place of allegory in this corpus, the thesis is primarily intended as
a contribution to English literary and intellectual history. On a broader level, it is also
intended as a contribution to the more comprehensive project of “allegory studies”: the
emergent nexus of interdisciplinary scholarship tackling those comprehensive and
fundamental issues raised by the phenomenon of allegory which transcend particular
discipline-, period-, or author-focused contexts. The thesis thus hopes to demonstrate the
signal importance of the allegory-modernity problem in any advanced understanding of the
Western allegorical tradition, at the same time as it sheds new light on what is in many ways
the most important and most contested period – apart from our own, perhaps – in the history
of this tradition.

6
CONVENTIONS AND ABBREVIATIONS

The citation format adopted in this thesis combines essential references in the footnotes with
full entries in the Bibliography. Specifically, the references in the footnotes abbreviate titles,
initialize first names, and omit translators and collaborators (except where required for
identifying the work in the Bibliography), printers and publishers, and number of volumes for
multi-volume works.
The following abbreviations are employed:

CQ The Classical Quarterly
CW The Works of John Milton. Gen. ed. Frank Allen Patterson. 18 vols with index.
New York: Columbia UP, 1931-1938. [Columbia Works]
EETS Early English Text Society
ELN English Language Notes
ELR English Literary Renaissance
FR The Fortnightly Review
GM The Gentleman’s Magazine
HLQ Huntington Library Quarterly
JEGP Journal of English and Germanic Philology
JHI Journal of the History of Ideas
JMEMS The Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies
MLN Modern Language Notes
MLR Modern Language Review
MP Modern Philology
MQ Milton Quarterly
MS Milton Studies
N&Q Notes and Queries
ODBN Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
OED Oxford English Dictionary
OW The Complete Works of John Milton. Gen. ed. Thomas Corns and Gordon
Campbell. 11 vols. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2008–. [Oxford Works]
PQ Philological Quarterly
REED Records of Early English Drama
RES The Review of English Studies
SP Studies in Philology
SQ Shakespeare Quarterly
SS Shakespeare Survey
UTQ University of Toronto Quarterly
YP Complete Prose Works of John Milton. Gen. ed. Don M. Wolfe. 8 vols. New
Haven: Yale UP, 1953-82. [Yale Prose]
7
INTRODUCTION
ALLEGORY AND MODERNITY