Modern Allegory and Fantasy: Rhetorical Stances of Contemporary Writing

223 Pages·1989·21.43 MB·English

by  Lynette Hunter (auth.)

MODERN ALLEGORY AND FANTASY
Also by Lynette Hunter
GEORGE ORWELL: THE SEARCH FOR A VOICE
*G. K. CHESTERTON, EXPLORATIONS IN ALLEGORY
*RHETORICAL STANCE IN MODERN LITERATURE
*Also from Palg rave Macmillan
Modern Allegory
and Fantasy
Rhetorical Stances of
Contemporary Writing
Lynette Hunter
Lecturer, Institute for Bibliography
and Textual Criticism
University of Leeds
Palgrave Macmillan
ISBN 978-1-349-19694-4 ISBN 978-1-349-19692-0 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-19692-0
©Lynette Hunter 1989
Softcover reprint ofthe hardcover 1st edition 1989 978-0-333-45370-4
All rights reserved. For information, write:
Scholarly and Reference Division,
St. Martin's Press, Inc., 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010
First published in the United States of America in 1989
ISBN 978-0-312-02430-7
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Hunter, Lynette.
Modern allegory and fantasy.
1. Fantastic fiction-History and criticism.
2. Allegory. I Title.
PN3435.H86 1989 809.3'915 88-18229
ISBN 978-0-312-02430-7
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Genre
1 Theories of Genre
Evolution 5
Analogies for poetic and rhetoric 9
Analogies for genre 12
2 Genre in Fantasy and Allegory 27
The critics 28
The theorists 34
2 Fantasy
1 A Background of Games and Desire 39
Theories from the 30s 43
2 Attempts to define Fantasy as a genre 51
Relationships with romance, fairytale, satire,
utopia, nonsense, the grotesque, pastoral
3 Theories of Fantasy as a Game
Definition by Technique: verisimilitude, isol
ation, rationalism
Rhetorical implications: the attempt at
neutrality 70
4 Theories of Fantasy as Desire 78
Definition by Mode: supernatural/marvellous 78
Definition by Mode: realism/science fiction 8s
Definition by Mode: Freud and neurosis 92
Rhetorical implications: the attempt at purity 96
5 Theories of Fantasy as Power 98
Humanism: romance 98
Hierarchy: authority, Kosmos, sctence,
psychoanalysis 106
Rhetorical implications: the attempt at power II6
Apocalypse, prophecy, entropy and the
radioactive envelope II9
6 Theories of Fantasy as Politics 122
Jameson: ideology and class collectivity !22
Summary: rhetorical implications and the
necessity for doublethink 127
3 Allegory
r A Background to Allegory and Representation
Theories from the 30s to the present day
2 Allegory as Genre and/or Mode
Relationships with genre: fairytale, fable,
parable, apologue, emblem, levels, menippea
Relationships with mode: structural, 1romc,
symbolic, satiric 37
1
3 Allegory as Stance 140
The external world 140
The reader 144
4 Allegory and Materiality 149
Techniques for Representation 149
Allegory as Truth, Tendency to Fantasy:
apprehended, polysemous, oppositional 149
Allegory as material difference: the necessary
involvement of the reader r62
Rhetorical implications: interaction r66
5 The analogies:
altos, metaphor/symbol, money/exchange,
desire/love, algebra/zero, deceit/truth and
radioactive decay 172
4 Fantasy and Allegory
r Distinctions:
Genre and technique, mode and
ideology/epistemology, rhetoric and stance r8r
2 Discussion: r86
Women's writing about alternative worlds:
fantasy or allegory?
Notes 202
Index 2!0
Acknowledgments
This work has been shared by many and these acknowledgments
act as a dedication.
The writing took place while I was a Research Fellow at the
University of Liverpool, and more recently a lecturer at the
University of Leeds. I thank those institutions for giving me the
opportunity to begin and to complete this work; I would also like to
thank Angela Archdale for her patient secretarial help.
Those people who read versions of the work and provided acute
criticism are Stephen Bygrave, Shirley Chew, Lesley Johnson,
Diane Macdonnel, John Thompson and an unknown publisher's
reader. Their help has been beyond value. I am grateful to
Christopher Dewdney for permission to begin with the extract
from Fovea Centralis. And I must particularly thank Peter
Lichtenfels and Hilary Rose who beat the unwieldy metal of my
thinking into shape, with strength resilience and resistance.
Lynette Hunter
From a Handbook of Remote Control
2. Individual to Individual
The remote control personality constructs a meticulous lie around
another being. Particle by particle the solid reality that composed
the allegorical ground he stood on is replaced by fantasies and lies.
(fossilization) This work, once attained creates a time loophole, a
backwater where reality and time stand halted. The remote
control agent hides in this cul de sac until he builds up enough
energy to attempt a group control situation. At any point a skillful
agent can reverse the process and replace fantasy with reality so
smoothly the individual does not even know his feet ever left the
ground.
from Christopher Dewdney, Fovea Centra/is
Introduction
The impetus to write this book comes from two sources, the
confusion in critical theory about the-terms fantasy and allegory
and the wildly contradictory readings that emerge from books
labelled with either term. The confusion exists not just because the
terms are relatively new to criticism but because the theory of
genre, which could be expected to help with definition, is itself in
turmoil and inadequate to describe the activity of these writings.
The concept of genre as a fixed kind tied to a set of techniques has
recently been changed to incorporate historically specific strategies
that relate writing to epistemology and ideology- the theories of
knowledge, culture and perception - pertinent to the time of
writing and the time of reading. These changes have led to genres
being defined in terms primarily of mode, with the recognition that
techniques are still important because at particular times they will
be more or less appropriate to a modal strategy.
However, I would suggest that the confusions arising between
fantasy and allegory are rooted in materiality and belief-in other
words in rhetoric. Only in looking at rhetorical stance, which tries
to describe the interaction between writer, reader and words in the
text, can we arrive at an activity which begins partially to
illuminate the confused nature of the readings.
In part two of this book begins with fantasy and follows early
twentieth-century attempts to define it in terms of two apparently
different strategies: games and desire. As these modes offantasy are
taken up and extended by theorists in the post-war period it
becomes increasingly clear that each strategy attempts a
separation from the material world by claiming either neutrality or
purity. At the same time a number of theorists in the 6os and 70s
begin to recognise that the strategies of games and desire, and the
techniques they use in twentieth-century writing, are in effect
covert attempts at authoritarian power which can be employed in
a pragmatic way in state politics. But these more recent theorists
never fully articulate the strategy for a covert persuasion that is
held to enable both writer and reader to assume a disinterested, in