Allegory Old and New: In Literature, the Fine Arts, Music and Theatre, and Its Continuity in Culture

324 Pages·1994·8.75 MB·English

by  Marlies Kronegger (auth.)

ALLEGORY OLD AND NEW
ANALECTA HUSSERLIANA
THE YEARBOOK OF PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCH
VOLUME XLII
Editor-in-ChieJ-
ANNA-TERESA TYMIENIECKA
The World Institute for Advanced Phenomenological Research and Learning
Belmont, Massachusetts
ALLEGORY VOLUMES
Book 1 Allegory Revisited: Ideals of Mankind
Book 2 Allegory Old and New: In Literature, the Fine Arts, Music
and Theatre, and Its Continuity in Culture
ALLEGORY OLD AND NEW
in Literature, the Fine Arts, Music and Theatre,
and lts Continuity in Culture
Edited by
MARLIES KRONEGGER
Michigan State University, East Lansing
and
ANNA-TERESA TYMIENIECKA
The World Phenomenology Institute
Published under the auspices of
The World Institute for Advanced Phenomenological Research and Learning
A-T. Tymieniecka, President
SPRINGER-SCIENCE+BUSINESS MEDIA, B.V.
Library of Congress Cataloging-ln-Publlcatlon Data
Allegory old and new in 1 iterature, flne art, mUS1C and theatre and
its contlnulty ln culture I edlted by MarI les Kronegger and Anna
-Teresa Tymieniecka.
p. cm, -- (Analecta Husserllana ; v. 42)
Eng 1 i sh and French.
·Publlshed under the auspices of the World Instltute for Aavanced
Phenomenological Research and Learnlng.·
A selection of pa pers from two congresses held by the
Internatlonal Society of Phenomenology and Literature, the XVIIth
Annua 1 Congress ln Cambr ldge, MA, ln Apr il, 1992, and the XXIX
International Phenomenology Congress ln Luxemburg, June 14, 1992.
Inc 1u des 1n dex.
ISBN 978-94-011-7649-1 ISBN 978-94-011-1946-7 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-94-011-1946-7
1. AI I egory--Congresses. 2. Li terature--Ph il osophy--Congresses.
3. Arts--Congresses. 1. Kronegger, MarI ies, 1932-
II. Tymienlecka, Anna-Teresa. III. World Instltute for Advanced
Phenomenologlcal Research and Learnlng. IV. Internatlonal Soclety
for Phenomenology and Llterature (18th 1992 Cambridge, Mass.)
V. Internatlonal Phenomenology Congress (29th 1992 Luxembourg,
Luxembourg) VI. Serles.
B3279.H94A129 voI. 42
[PN56.A5]
142' .7 s--dc20
[809' ,915] 93-8088
Printed an acid-free paper
All Rights Reserved
© 1994 by Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
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No part of the material protected by this copyright notice
may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS vii
THE THEME / Allegory: Aesthetic Vehicle of the Spirit ix
PART I
MARLIES KRONEGGER / Allegory and Maxim: Power and
Faith, Passions and Virtues 3
JADWIGA SMITH / Allegory and the Dramatic Foundations of
the Medieval Theater 29
CHRISTINE RAFFINI / Balzac's Allegories of Energy in La
Comedie Humaine 37
HELENE VISENTIN / Oracle et allegorie dans L'Andromede de
Pierre Corneille 49
JOAN B. WILLIAMSON / Allegory Then and Now: The
Physician and Disease 61
HEATHER ROSS / Michael Drayton's 'Ideas' and the 'Where'
and the 'Whence' of Allegory 83
PART II
MARIE-FRANCE WAGNER / Les Conqueres de la Toison d'or
of 1661 and 1683: The Breakdown of the Sun Allegory 95
FRAN<;OISE DIVORNE / Le jeu allegorique chez Poussin:
Les Putti comme embLeme dans Tancrede et Herminie
(Birmingham) 113
LOIS OPPENHEIM / Michel Butor's L'Embarquement de La
Reine de Saba: An Allegorical Undoing of Aesthetic
Experience 131
DA VID K. HECKERL / Paul de Man and the Question of
'Domination Free' Allegory 141
NANCY CAMPI DE CASTRO / Allegory, You Are Woman 151
vi T ABLE OF CONTENTS
PART III
PILAR SUAREZ PASCUAL ET MARGARITA ALFARO
AMIEIRO / L'allegorie du mal. Deux epoques, deux per-
spectives 161
HELEN FLETCHER THOMPSON / From Metaphor to Matter:
Sartre, Merleau-Ponty and the Subject of Sight 185
GEORGE B. MOORE / Paranoia and the Aesthetics of Chaos
in Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow 203
RA YMOND J. WILSON III / Metaphoric and Metonymic
Allegory: Ricoeur, Jakobson, and the Poetry of W. B. Yeats 219
STARLA STENSAAS / The Transformed and Transforming
Image in the Shift from Print to Digital Culture 229
PART IV
COLETTE MICHAEL / Billy Budd: An Allegory on the Rights
of Man 251
KENNETH W. BREWER / Political Allegory: Bakhtin, Jameson
and Birago Diop's Les Contes d'Amadou Koumba 259
BERNADETTE PROCHASKA / The Myth of the Fall and Walker
Percy's Will Barrett 265
POL VANDEVELDE / The Possibility of a Phenomenology of the
Text. From and Against Postmodernism 277
DA VID L. MOSLEY / Gustav Mahler's lch bin der Welt
abhanden gekommen as Song and Symphonic Movement:
Abduction, Over-Coding, and Catachresis 293
S IT A N SURA Y / Madana (the Mythical Love-God) in Kalidasa
and Tagore 303
ANNEX
A. ZVIE BAR-ON / Freedom and Creativity 311
INDEX OF NAMES 319
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
In this volume is gathered a selection of papers from two congresses held
by The International Society of Phenomenology and Literature, affiliated
with The World Phenomenology Institute: the XVIIth Annual Congress
in Cambridge, MA, April, 1992, and the XXIXth International Pheno
menology Congress in Luxembourg, June 14, 1992.
We owe our special thanks to our Luxembourg hosts, in particular
to Professor Rosemarie Kieffer, who presided at the conference, and to
Professor Antoine Cipriani, President of the Luxembourg Society for
Literature and Comparative Literature, who took care of the local
logistics and pUblicity. The generous hospitality in Luxembourg was
greatly appreciated by all participants.
Isabelle Houthakker merits our thanks for her copy-editing of the
volume and Louis Houthakker read the proofs.
Marlies Kronegger
A-T. Tymieniecka
vii
THE THEME
ALLEGORY: AESTHETIC VEHICLE OF THE SPIRIT
The turn of contemporary literature toward the concrete everyday life
of average people, its search after the manifestation of their elemen
tary instincts, feelings, and reactions before they are controlled by the
mind with its moral and aesthetic molding, seems to make clear why
there is now no use for apotheosis, glorification and the 'idealisation'
of the 'extra-ordinary', which are characteristic of the aesthetic of alle
gorizing.
Concurrently, contemporary philosophy and literary theory focus upon
the primary linguistic forms which make intelligible communication
possible; they stay aloof from allegory, as this latter seems to be a sort
of 'second degree' intellectual construct.
Allegory is, indeed, a construct of the human mind, and it is not
situated, as are symbol or metaphor, at the borderline between the unin
telligible and the intelligible; nonetheless its impulse stems not from
the already established human mind and the intellect at work, but from
the subliminal forge of the human soul on the primogenital level of the
origination of the specifically human significance of life.
The actual function of allegorizing sets in when the mind has already
reached the peak of its development; but its trajectory from its primo
genital impulse traverses in a unifying, harmonizing fashion all the
sentient, emotive, intelligible circuits of the human significance of exis
tence.
Drawing, on the one hand, upon all three of the mind's sense-giving
factors - aesthetic/poetic, moral, intellectual - it gives the decisive role
to the first of them; it is essentially a manifestation of the aesthetic sig
nificance of life.
On the other hand, contrary to the tendency to see allegory as a mere
construct of the intellectual faculties, it is, in fact, a response to the
deepest subliminal longings of the human being launching upon the
journey of the creative mind, longings which, concurrently with the
surging of the mind, prompt the human spirit to rise and soar.
While the human spirit unfolds and takes shape in ever more elevated
IX
x THE THEME
values, ideals, and aspirations toward generous, noble, and beautiful deeds
- allowing the soul to lift its life above the concrete vicissitudes of
life's struggles, and endowing life with a specifically human significance
- it is from the same longing of the subliminal soul that the allego
rizing function of the mind organises its work.
Thus allegory manifests itself at work when the task of the intellect,
imagination, memory, will, has already been accomplished.
Indeed, allegory surges by tying the knot of the various lines of sig
nificance worked out already by the faculties of the mind while infusing
them with the exaltation of the aesthetic sense; it seeks to incorporate
into a cogent significant complex a selection of elevated ideals, virtues,
values, which respond to the specific human longings of the period,
and to project its vision into concrete life itself.
Thus an allegory allows the human soul which is deciphering it to
invest life with its deepest yearnings and yet transcend life's turpitude
on the wings of the spirit.
Expressing the ideals and yearnings shared by persons of the same
community of life, a social group, a nation, allegory brings a given culture
to its height; it manifests its highlights.
Cultures evolve, become transformed, have their peaks and their
downfalls; and their respective perspectives upon the significance of
life evolve. However, the human spirit which finds the apex of its
manifestation in allegory will not stop rising as long as the human being
remains human.
ANNA-TERESA TYMIENIECKA
PART I