(Studies in Literature and Religion) Deborah L Madsen - Allegory in America - From Puritanism To Postmodernism-Palgrave Macmillan LTD (1995)

ALLEGORY IN AMERICA
STUDIES IN LITERATURE AND RELIGION

General Editor: David Jasper, Director of the Centre for the Study of
Literature and Theology, University of Glasgow
Studies in Literature and Religion is a major series of interdisciplinary titles,

both monographs and essays, concerned with matters of literature, art
and textuality within religious traditions founded upon texts and textual
study. In a variety of ways they are concerned with the fundamental
issues of the imagination, literary perceptions and theory, and an
understanding of poetics for theology and religious studies.
Published titles include:
David Scott Arnold

LIMINAL READINGS
Forms of Otherness in Melville, Joyce and Murdoch
John D. Barbour
THE CONSCIENCE OF THE AUTOBIOGRAPHER
Ethical and Religious Dimensions of Autobiography
Tibor Fabiny
THE LION AND THE LAMB
Figuralism and Fulfilment in the Bible, Art and Literature
Max Harris
THEATRE AND INCARNATION
David Jasper {editor)
POSTMODERNISM, LITERATURE AND THE
FUTURE OF THEOLOGY
TRANSLATING RELIGIOUS TEXTS
Ann Loades and Michael McLain (editors)
HERMENEUTICS, THE BIBLE AND LITERARY CRITICISM
Irena S. M. Makarushka
RELIGIOUS IMAGINATION AND
LANGUAGE IN EMERSON AND NIETZSCHE
Linda Munk
THE TRIVIAL SUBLIME
George Pattison
KIERKEGAARD: THE AESTHETIC AND THE RELIGIOUS
Allegory in America
From Puritanism to Postmodernism
Deborah L. Madsen
Render in English
and
Director of American Studies Programme
University of Leicester
First published in Great Britain 1996 by
MACMILLAN PRESS LTD
Houndmills, Basingstokc, Hampshire RG21 6XS
and London
Companies and representatives
throughout the world
A catalogue record for this book is available
from the British Library.
ISBN 0-333-64618-5
First published in the United States of America 1996 by

ST. MARTIN'S PRESS, INC.,
Scholarly and Reference Division,
175 Fifth Avenue,
New York, N.Y. 10010
ISBN 0-312-15998-6
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© Deborah L. Madscn 1996

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Printed and bound in Great Britain by
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Contents
General Editor's Foreword vii
Preface viii
Acknowledgemen ts ix
Introduction 1
1 Allegory in the Old World 6
2 Allegory in Colonial New England 38
3 Captivity Narratives: Mary Rowlandson, Harriet

Jacobs and the Rhetoric of Exceptionalism 58
4 Allegory and American Romanticism 82
5 Nathaniel Hawthorne's Rappaccini's Daughter and the

Sovereignty of the Self 103
6 The Fate of Allegory in the Twentieth Century 122
7 John Barth's Giles Goat-Boy and Post-Romantic

Allegory 145
Conclusion 167
Notes 171
Bibliography 180
Index 190
General Editor's Foreword
A theologian wrote recently, 'There seems to be a fundamental dis-
taste for, or even revulsion against, the whole business of allegory.
Why is this so? Basically, I think because we feel that there is some-
thing dishonest about allegory' (Andrew Louth, Discerning the Mys-
tery [Oxford, 1983], p. 97). Yet, despite this accusation, allegory is
very much on the agenda of literary and theological studies in our
time. In theology and biblical studies, the turn against a primarily
historical approach to texts has invited a re-vision of ancient alle-
gorical readings and understandings, and contemporary literary
suspicion of historical (diachronic) interpretations has also suggested
a revitalization of this ancient form.
Deborah Madsen's book resituates American literature within this
tradition, tracing it back to the allegorical inheritance which the
first Puritan settlers brought with them. Carefully examining its
ancient roots in the Christian tradition, Dr Madsen identifies alle-
gory with times of particular cultural crisis and explains its crucial
cultural function in the development and self-understanding of
North America, concluding that it has a dual function to empower
'those who situate themselves within the mainstream of American
life as well as those who see themselves as excluded from the main-
stream'. Allegory both empowers and subverts, which suggests not
only why it has survived so long in North American literature,
from Colonial New England to John Barth's Giles Goat-Boy, but
survived also in the Christian tradition as a whole from classical
times, re-emerging in our own times of crisis and ferment.
This is an elegant and timely book. It works beautifully at a pre-
cise intersection of literature and religion, dealing with the particu-
lar with learning and recognizing the general with the insight of
wisdom. It is a most valuable addition to 'Studies in Literature and
Religion'.
DAVID JASPER
General Editor
vn
Preface
It has seemed to me, in the course of researching and writing this
book, that there must be more than mere coincidence in the re-
peated instances where allegorical narratives have been produced
in response to some moment of particular cultural crisis. Specific-
ally, those crises which place in question the validity and relevance
of some culturally important, often sacred, book give rise to the
allegorical narratives that punctuate literary tradition. In keeping
with this tradition, the New England colonists turned to allegory
for a means of interpreting their experience of hardships and found
there a rhetorical structure for what has become a remarkably long-
lived mythology of the New World. But allegory proved to be a
double-edged sword. Not only did allegory structure a powerful
image of America as a redeemer nation, singled out by God for an
exceptional spiritual destiny, allegory also provided a space for the
expression of dissent from this orthodox view. Just how allegory
evolved this subversive function is the focus of my study. From the
allegorical practice of colonial dissidents through the period of
American Romanticism and into the twentieth century, allegory has
been the site of an ongoing debate over the ultimate destiny of New
World civilization. Why it is that allegory possesses the flexibility
to respond to the vicissitudes of cultural history and why allegory
remains a perpetually relevant literary form are the questions in-
vestigated in this study of the allegorical tradition in America.
via
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to many individuals and institutions for supporting
my work on the tradition of allegorical rhetoric, in particular: Pro-
fessor Ken Ruthven, University of Melbourne, for inspiring my
interest in poststructuralism and rhetorical analysis, Professor
Stephen Fender, University of Sussex, for directing my attention
back to the biblical and classical origins of allegory, Peter Nicholls,
also of the University of Sussex, for listening while I attempted to
make connections with contemporary American culture, and my
students at the University of Leicester for forcing me to clarify and
rethink my ideas. Hans Robert Jauss, Charles Swann and Macmillan's
anonymous reader have made very helpful and penetrating com-
ments on the ideas explored here. The Mid-America American Stud-
ies Association honoured my work on colonial allegory with the
award of the inaugural Stone-Suderman Prize for American Stud-
ies: for this encouragement I am especially grateful. The unflagging
support of my husband Mark and our daughters, Selene and Dana,
has made this work possible.
Portions of this book have appeared in print elsewhere, though
with rather different points of focus: sections of Chapter 3 were
published in American Studies 33.1 (Spring 1992), pp. 45-61; parts of
Chapter 5 appeared in the Journal of Narrative Technique 18.2 (Spring
1988), pp. 153-69; and sections of Chapter 7 first appeared in South-
ern Review (Adelaide), 20.3 (November 1987), 240-57.
IX
Introduction
The substance of this book has evolved over a number of years.
Initially, I became interested in the poststructuralist reappraisal of
allegory and the apparent potential of allegory to explain character-
istics of American postmodernist writing. From there, I worked back-
wards, as it were, to the nineteenth-century Renaissance narratives
of Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville, which referred me
to the origins of allegorical interpretation in classical and biblical
exegesis. From there, I pursued an evolving tradition of allegorical
hermeneutics through the upheavals of the European Reformation,
and the emergence of a distinctive style of Protestant allegory, to
the rhetoric of the Puritan mission in the New World. Much of this
earlier work formed the substance of Rereading Allegory: A Narrative
Approach to Genre (1994) which, as the title suggests, explores the
generic status of allegory. What intrigued me in the course of the
research, more than the remarkable longevity of this style of writing
and the narrative genre to which it gave rise, was the coincidence
between the writing of culturally significant narratives in an alle-
gorical style and a moment of peculiar cultural tension, even crisis.
Allegorical interpretation originated in ancient Greece at a time when
the sacred myths of Homer and Hesiod were coming under attack
from a sceptical audience which rejected the literal truth supposedly
represented by these stories. Hebraic culture, particularly the com-
munity at Alexandria, took up the hermeneutic strategy offered by
allegory in order to protect the Torah from the threat posed by in-
vasive Greek philosophies to the authority of the sacred book. And
Christian exegetes made use of allegory in order to incorporate the
Hebrew Testament, together with the New Testament, into a new
Bible which would answer pagan and Judaistic hostilities towards
the new Christian theology. Again and again, at any moment when
the textual justification for a particular cultural order was threat-
ened by historical change or by a shift in dominant beliefs, it was
to allegorical interpretation that exegetes had recourse, in order to
shore up the authority and legitimacy of their sacred book.
The case has been no different in the history of American rhetoric.
1
2 Allegory in America
Confronted with the mystery of the New World and the hostility of
its landscape, the Puritan colonists of the first generation also had
recourse to allegorical interpretation. They interpreted their mission
as a sacred calling out of the spiritual bondage of Europe and into
the New Canaan of America. There, this saving remnant of God's
European congregation would establish a purified and perfectly
reformed Church to stand as an example to all the churches of the
world; they would found a nation to be as 'a citie upon a hill', a
redeemer nation capable of saving all the peoples of the earth from
their unredeemed selves. They interpreted their trials as signs of
God's merciful chastisement of His chosen people. Starvation, Indian
attack, disease and internecine conflict all symbolized God's con-
cern for their spiritual welfare and for the success of their mission.
Hardship was God's means of warning them of the dangers of com-
placency as well as of backsliding. The allegorical interpretation of
these experiences within the context of biblical models, particularly
the example of Moses who led his redeemed people out of bondage
in Egypt into the freedom of the Promised Land, lent legitimacy to
the sufferings of the settlers and also to their colonial ambitions but,
perhaps more importantly, this style of allegorical interpretation
gave rise to a powerful mythology of the colonized New World.
Allegory provided the rhetorical structure for what has become
a pervasive and long-lived mythology of the New World, while the
'grand narrative' of America as a 'redeemer' nation produced a
corresponding ideology of manifest destiny. What this meant, within
the terms of allegorical rhetoric, was that the manifest sacred destiny
of America was to subdue and to redeem the wilderness of the
continent: this was the predestined future mapped out for those
who would look to the biblical models inscribed by God. This vision
of American national identity has since become known as American
'exceptionalism' and this term will appear again and again in this
study of American allegory. For allegory's engagement in the rhetoric
of national identity is twofold. Allegory not only provided the
powerful rhetorical means for expressing such an 'exceptional'
national destiny, allegory also made available a focus for those whose
vision of what New World history should look like departed from
the orthodox view of America as a redeemer nation. Allegory became
the rhetoric of dissent as well as the voice of orthodoxy. And this
duality has been sustained throughout the history of American al-
legory, from its seventeenth-century beginnings to the late twentieth
century. Just how allegory evolved this function within the context
of American culture is the focus of this book.
Introduction 3
The first chapter offers a survey of the Old World models of

allegory that were taken to the New World by the first generation
of Puritan settlers. These expressions of allegory's potential, both as
a method of interpretation and as a narrative genre, provided a
measure of what allegory could achieve. At the same time, these
allegorical structures functioned as a common exegetical language,
comprehensible to the congregationalist theologians of the Old World
who formed the primary audience for colonial rhetoric. It was they
whom the American Puritans desired to convert to their vision of
a purified and truly reformed Church. Allegory provided a structure
of thought common to both and a metaphorical site for their eccle-
siastical debate. Therefore, the inherited models of allegorical dis-
course exerted a prescriptive influence over the evolving form of
colonial allegory. The chapters that follow address this evolution by
sketching out the tradition of American allegory. This is not an
exhaustive account of all of the varieties of allegorical practice that
have emerged within the American literary tradition. Rather, I focus
upon the mainstream and in particular upon the tradition of dissent
which reacts against the long-lived Puritan mythology of the re-
deemer nation. At first, colonial dissidents such as Roger Williams
provide the terms for an investigation into the rhetoric of a counter-
discourse of New World potentialities. This counter-history is ex-
pressed in terms that work upon the vocabulary of allegorical
typology in such a way as to subvert that rhetorical structure and
turn it against its orthodox purpose. Allegory is made to work
against itself and to expose the ideological manoeuvring that under-
lies orthodox typology.
The relationship between allegory and typology is complex, as
will become apparent in the historical account of the two rhetorical
forms. Basically, however, typology is a form of allegory. All typo-
logy is allegorical. But not all allegory is typological. Typology rep-
resents a formal restriction of the interpretative possibilities opened
up by allegorical exegesis. In the argument that unfolds here, it is
my contention that in the American tradition the typological re-
striction of allegorical freedom is politically motivated. The indeter-
minacy of allegorical expression and the freedom of thought that it
encourages are regulated by the practice of typology which draws
all signs into a strict pattern of promise and fulfilment. But this
repressive power of typology has been coopted by a number of
important American writers who have used the structuring capa-
city of typology to express an alternative and dissenting vision of
America's national identity and national destiny.
In the tradition of colonial dissidents, American Romantics such

as Hawthorne and Melville used allegorical rhetoric to question the
mythology of the New World and the relevance of America's ex-
ceptional dispensation to the culture of nineteenth-century America.
Where Emerson saw a symbolic aesthetic as equal to the task of
expressing America's spiritual destiny, Hawthorne and Melville use
an allegorical discourse to expose the weaknesses of Emerson's
position and to reveal the potential dangers of the subjective epis-
temology that Emerson recommends. The modern practice of alle-
gory follows the sceptical precedent of Hawthorne and Melville
rather than the example of Emerson. In the twentieth century, alle-
gory is represented, theoretically, as a fundamental expression of
dissidence. Modern allegory confronts us with the unknowability
of transcendent categories of experience and restricts our sphere of
questioning to the subjective. The entire issue of national spiritual
destiny is displaced into the issue of whether any meaning can ever
carry an objective authority and collective significance. Postmoder-
nist allegory, then, asks whether we can ever separate the perception
of meaning from the subjective projection of significance and, if we
cannot, whose interests are served by this ambiguity. Each of the
historical chapters deals with a specific form of allegory which
emerges in response to a particular moment of cultural crisis. And
each historical chapter is followed by a close textual analysis of a
representative allegorical narrative or, in the case of captivity nar-
ratives, an exemplary style or sub-genre of allegorical narrative.
What I seek to show in all of the chapters which follow is that
allegory has been the privileged form to which successive gen-
erations of American writers have turned in times of particular
uncertainty and tension because allegory is, fundamentally, an
indeterminate literary form. The essential indeterminacy of refer-
ence that characterizes allegorical interpretation and allegorical nar-
ratives lends to allegory the kind of flexibility needed to respond to
the vicissitudes of cultural history. Allegory comes into its own
during periods of uncertainty regarding the nature of communica-
tion, the reliability of language and the authenticity of culturally
important texts because allegory is, above all, focused upon the
complexities and difficulties inherent in the activity of interpreta-
tion. As a literary genre, allegory is distinguished by the manner in
which it thematizes the techniques of allegorical interpretation,
providing a critique of hermeneutic methods even as it interprets
the spiritual experiences represented by the narrative. From its roots
Introduction 5
in Hellenistic culture and the Christian compromise with Judaism,

to its function in developing a peculiarly Protestant exegetical prac-
tice, to its role in the deconstruction of inauthentic and 'mystifying'
symbolic discourses, allegory has intervened in all of the most
important debates concerning the spiritual destiny of Western civil-
ization. And allegory has played a corresponding part in the con-
flicts of a developing American civilization. As America has
progressed from a settlement to a super-power, it is allegory which
has provided the site for an ongoing debate over the spiritual nature
and destiny of the New World. Allegory has represented the ortho-
dox vision of America as the chosen redeemer nation, the world's
last and best chance, and allegory has given a voice to those who
dissent from this vision, who use allegory only to reject what it has
come to stand for. In this way, allegory represents an important
tradition of intervention in the cultural politics of the New World.
The development of this tradition and the nature of this interven-
tion are the issues explored in the chapters which follow.
This study of allegory in America uses the techniques of post-
structuralist analysis in order to reveal the indeterminacy which
lies at the heart of allegory as a rhetorical form, an indeterminacy
which can be traced back to the origins of allegorical interpretation
in ancient Hellenistic and Roman cultures and is emphasized in
Christian adaptations of allegory in typological exegesis. This in-
determinacy, within the context of New World allegorical narratives,
is seen to generate a style of writing based on a structure of deferrals
that culminates in the disclosure of aporia, an irresolvable vacillation
between transcendent categories of meaning that cannot be recon-
ciled but, equally, cannot be ignored. It is this capacity to represent
aporia, or a fundamental uncertainty of reference, that fits allegory
so well to the task of responding to crises of reference that are of
crucial cultural significance. This work is situated within the tradi-
tion of American rhetorical studies established by scholars such as
Perry Miller, Sacvan Bercovitch, Philip Gura, Larzer Ziff and, re-
cently, Mason Lowance and Anne Kibbey. I hope that this book will
complement the valuable work of these scholars by bringing to-
gether rhetorical analysis, critical theory and cultural study in in-
structive and enlightening ways.
Allegory in the Old World
This chapter sets out the models of European allegory from which
the American tradition developed. These models formed the alle-
gorical inheritance which was transported to the New World with
the first Puritan settlers. I begin with a survey of the originary
styles of allegorical interpretation because the narrative form of
literary allegory developed historically from classical and biblical
models of allegorical interpretation and, as such, the narrative genre
is characterized by the thematization of allegorical hermeneutics
within the story or plot. Differing assumptions about, and practices
of, interpretation have given rise to an enormous diversity of alle-
gorical narratives. What they all share is the quest for spiritual
meaning which is sought through the correct interpretation of ma-
terial signs: the signs of temporal history, corporeal nature and
human reason. This spiritual meaning is assumed to explain the
character of the human condition in terms of some culturally im-
portant book. The authority of this sacred book and also the legit-
imacy of its cultural representations are protected and promoted by
the practice of allegorical interpretation. Allegory, in fact, appears
at times of peculiar cultural crisis, when the authority of the sacred
book is under threat from various quarters. Classical Hellenistic
allegory responds to the degradation of the Homeric myths by lit-
eral readings; Judaistic allegory, practised in Alexandria by Philo
Judeus, seeks to counter the threat posed by adopted Greek ideas
to the authority of the Torah; Christian allegory responds to the
problematical relationship between the two Testaments and the
hostility of pagans and Jews to the new Christian theology. In all
three cases, allegory offers a rhetorical means of coping with his-
torical and cultural change by accommodating these changes to the
continuing authority of the sacred text. All three forms of allegorical
interpretation seek a further spiritual or philosophical dimension of
meaning beyond the literal but the strategies by which they do this
differ quite radically.
Allegory in the Old World 7
In particular, classical and Christian allegory differ in the assump-

tions they make about the relationship between literal and spiritual
'levels' of meaning. Classical allegory assumes that a 'higher' mean-
ing is extrinsic to the text, that the text is indeterminate and that
allegory is the activity of identifying the extrinsic significance of the
text in some autonomous philosophical or religious discourse. Philo's
allegory shares the classical assumption that meaning is independ-
ent of the literal 'surface' of the text but Alexandrian interpreters
attribute a more limited indeterminacy to the text than do their
classical counterparts. Within this allegorical context the text may
mean many things but it cannot mean just anything. Meaning is
assumed to reside in the divine 'soul' of the text which is generous
enough to encompass all aspects of human experience. Both the text
and the interpreter are divinely inspired and are thus guided towards
the correct meaning of the sacred book. Early Christian practition-
ers of allegorical interpretation share this view that the accuracy of
individual interpretations depends crucially upon the faith of the
exegete. But it is the text alone which is inspired as the Word of
God, in the Christian account. Christian allegory assumes that mean-
ing is intrinsic to the literal narrative of Scripture and that meaning
is accessible through a complex pattern of divine hints and analogies:
the pattern of typology. Typology describes the interpretation of
Old Testament events and characters as foreshadowings of the events
of the New Testament and the promise of a new dispensation repre-
sented by Christ. In this way, typology regulates the referential
indeterminacy of allegory by prescribing the meaning of scriptural
images and making them refer only to the two testaments. This
restriction of allegorical freedom was achieved by the early Chris-
tian interpreters; later, the applicability of typology was widened to
include all manner of non-scriptural signifing forms. The assump-
tion that spiritual significance resides in all the signs created by
God was generalized by the Apologists to encompass the secular
signs found in nature, temporal history and the individual con-
sciousness as well as Scripture. This extension of the techniques of
typological interpretation from the specific context of the sacred
book into the secular realm was particularly significant for the
development of a tradition of allegorical narratives which took as
their subject the interpretation of secular experience by the individ-
ual protagonist for clues to the soul's ultimate destiny. The general-
ized field of typological interpretation also meant that the restrictive
power of typology could be used for distinct ideological purposes

because typology acquired importance in the interpretation of the
individual's spiritual life which supplemented the typological inter-
pretation of the sacred text.
The awareness of doubleness which is of such importance to the
hermeneutic endeavour to reconcile literal with spiritual dimen-
sions of meaning permeates the entire literary tradition of allegory.
From the homily, which demonstrates the dogmatic meaning of
individual images, to fully extended imaginative narratives which
incorporate the interpretation of their own images, literary allegory
depends upon (even when it questions) the assumption that literal
signs possess further abstract significances and that the reconciliation
of these levels of significance offers a legitimate and authoritative
foreshadowing of the terms of individual salvation. The precise
meaning of salvation, of course, is prescribed by the sacred book
and so the narrative is required at some point to displace the nar-
rative quest for spiritual meaning into the interpretation of the
anterior sacred text. This then raises what is the most fundamental
issue with regard to the practice of allegory: when spiritual meanings
are manifest in secular signs they no longer remain purely spiritual
and yet they are not purely secular; they are corrupted but not
transformed by these corporeal signs. In pre-Romantic allegory, the
solution to this rhetorical aporia was to take recourse to the inter-
pretation of the sacred book and to displace responsibility for the
spiritual meaning of the narrative on to the faith of the individual
interpreter. But in the period since Romanticism we find that this
kind of aporia becomes the focal point of the entire narrative for it
is at this point that the sovereignty of the individual subject, pro-
moted by Romantic aesthetics, defeats the power of faith to discover
an approved spiritual meaning. It was the Protestant Reformation
which accelerated the trend towards elevating the role of the individ-
ual subject in the exegetical process and this generated a distinctive
style of Protestant allegory. This new form of allegorical interpreta-
tion sought a direct communion with God through the inspired text
of Scripture and independently of the hermeneutic traditions of the
Church. The rejection of the Church as an objective arbiter of scrip-
tural meanings meant that responsibility for accuracy in interpre-
tation was placed with the individual and the relationship between
that individual and the Holy Spirit. In the case of redeemed individ-
uals, according to Protestant hermeneutics, God will act through
the mediation of the Holy Spirit to guide the solitary exegete to the
correct reading of the book. This emphasis upon the individual

and the power of subjectivity was exaggerated by Romantic the-
ories of individual genius and led to the emergence of a distinct
tradition of post-Romantic allegory within American literature.
However, allegory is more than simply a theme or even an idea
that recurs throughout American literature. The concern with inter-
pretation and the wider cultural implications of hermeneutic prac-
tice is an important theme in the prominent writings of the American
canon: from the Puritans to nationalists like Benjamin Franklin, to
the nineteenth-century Renaissance writers, to postmodernists like
John Barth and Thomas Pynchon. But allegory also represents a
form of engagement with the European tradition of allegory that
dates back even further than Christian exegesis to classical Greek
and Roman allegory. So allegory articulates a profound sense of
continuity with the European past and also it represents an equally
profound perception of the uniqueness of the New World environ-
ment. This environment may be thought of in physical, cultural and
theological, political or broadly ideological terms. Allegory has pro-
vided the rhetorical terms for expressing a vision of New World
destiny that is more compelling for the roots it has established deep
in Western cultural history.
The distinctively American tradition of literary allegory began
with the Puritan writing of diaries, providential histories, spiritual
autobiographies, captivity narratives and a very large body of ser-
mon literature. The Puritan settlers of New England used the legacy
of European allegory to formulate that complex mythology of New
World 'exceptionalism' which was mentioned earlier. They inter-
preted their experience of migration and the hardships they endured
in typological terms as significant repetitions of biblical models and
as signs of God's special interest in his new chosen people. Typology
revealed to the orthodox congregationalists of New England that
theirs was a divine mission to establish a perfectly reformed church
which would stand as an example to all the nations of the world:
their redeemer nation would be guided by God towards a glorious
destiny and, in millenialist interpretations, would even be the site of
Christ's return to earth. Allegory functions as a conservative response
to a perceived cultural threat. Allegory seeks to sustain the author-
ity of some culturally important sacred text by establishing the
ongoing relevance of this text both to individuals and to the com-
munity at large. Certainly, this was the role of allegorical interpre-
tation within the context of the colonial New England orthodoxy.
The relevance of the Bible to the experience of migration and settle-

ment was promoted by the typological interpretation of colonial
experience as a repetition of such biblical models as Moses leading
his people out of bondage in Egypt and into the Promised Land.
American Puritans tended to interpret the biblical significance of
their sufferings - through hunger, disease, Indian attack, and inter-
colonial conflict - by stressing the punitive aspect of typology. The
jeremiads of the second generation, particularly, emphasized the
experience of suffering as punishment for sin or as merciful chas-
tisement by a loving yet exacting God who was concerned that His
chosen people should not backslide but should realize the glorious
destiny that awaited them. The interpretation of experience as repre-
senting a pattern of rewards and punishments brought the colonial
experience into relation with the sacred text that also was interpreted
as representing a complex pattern of divine punishments and re-
wards. The relevance of the biblical model to New England life
(secular and spiritual) was thus assured through the practice of
allegorical interpretation.
But those like Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson and non-
Separating congregationalists who rejected the orthodox view of
America's exceptional destiny also used allegorical rhetoric to reg-
ister their dissent. By undermining the referential structure of con-
ventional allegorical (specifically, typological) rhetoric they were
able to disrupt the operations of mythologizing discourses which
had transformed the American continent into a redeemer nation.
This disruption of orthodox Puritan allegory created a space for the
articulation of an alternative vision of America's destiny. More
importantly, however, this subversive use of allegorical rhetoric
provided the means by which voices that otherwise would remain
silent could participate in important cultural debates. As we shall
see, this was the case for orthodox Puritan women who wrote of
their spiritual experiences using the typological rhetoric of captivity
narratives and, later, elements of this allegorical rhetoric were used
by slave women such as Harriet Jacobs to articulate their dissent
from the orthodox myth of America. It is the indeterminacy at the
heart of allegorical interpretation, that uncertain space opened up
between the literal and the spiritual, that enabled such writers to
appropriate allegorical rhetoric and apply it to alternative construc-
tions of America's national destiny. Where an orthodox Puritan
such as Mary Rowlandson uses typology to describe herself as a
privileged subject of American exceptionalism, Harriet Jacobs uses
typological reference initially to describe her exclusion from the

national mythology, and then to enact a wholesale condemnation of
that brand of Christianity which she sees supporting slavery in the
southern states and consequently undermining America's claim to
an exemplary spiritual and moral status.
The rhetorical indeterminacy which made allegory such an em-
powering form of discourse for women like Jacobs and Rowlandson,
who otherwise would have remained silent, came under attack
during the nineteenth century by proponents of Romantic aesthetic
principles: principally, in Europe, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and, in
America, Ralph Waldo Emerson. Both Coleridge and Emerson pro-
moted the authority of individual imagination in the person of the
interpreter who is able to read symbolically the spiritual dimension
of Scripture and the mystical language of nature. But the primacy
of subjectivity in matters concerning allegorical interpretation pro-
duced a corresponding devaluation of objective forms of hermeneutic
authority. The absence of a source of interpretative legitimation
outside the individual interpreter produced a radical sense of inde-
terminacy and an inability to reconcile conflicting (literal versus
spiritual) dimensions of meaning within the allegorical narrative.
That aporia, the irreconcilable conflict between transcendent mean-
ing and temporal sign, which is the subject of allegory, becomes in
allegorical narratives of the post-Romantic period the expression
of a hermeneutic legitimation crisis. This is particularly the case in
the work of Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville, writers
who are renowned for the pervasive ambiguity of their allegorical
narratives. Allegories such as Hawthorne's Rappaccini's Daughter
address the conditions necessary for an accurate understanding of
the relationship between the ideal and the real but conclude in
paradox, with the discovery that the transcendent is dependent upon
the temporal for representation but once represented in language
the transcendent is no longer pure transcendence - yet only lan-
guage offers access to the transcendent. The ideal and the real are
neither identical, nor are they radically different. Each depends upon
the other: the ideal and the real, Truth and Falsehood, the subjec-
tive and the objective, the sacred and the profane, the self and the
Other. This forms the central problematic of post-Romantic alle-
gory: the interdependence of absolute categories and the inability
of unaided subjectivity to negotiate an authoritative relationship
between them.
In the work of Hawthorne and Melville this allegorical critique of
Romantic subjectivism is addressed as part of a wider attack on the

mythology of America which Emerson, in particular, supported.
Hawthorne and Melville developed the ambiguous nature of post-
Romantic allegory into a style of rhetoric that perfectly expressed
their dissent from the orthodox vision of America as possessed of a
manifest spiritual destiny. So an allegorical narrative like Rappaccini's
Daughter subverts the operations of conventional typology to reveal
the claim upon the interpreter's faith that is essential to the work-
ings of typology. One must believe in the spiritual continuity re-
vealed by typology among disparate but spiritually identical events
within God's providential history. In the absence of faith, or a reli-
able guide to verifiable spiritual meanings, typology breaks down
and the powerful indeterminacy of allegory reasserts itself. The
pattern of significant repetitions upon which the mythology of
America is constructed dissolves in the absence of faith into dis-
crete and unrelated units. And Hawthorne and Melville display a
remarkable degree of scepticism in their allegorical narratives. The
coupling of scepticism with subjectivism in recent accounts of liter-
ary allegory, and in modern allegorical narratives, is the legacy of
Romantic theories of allegory. In postmodernist allegorical narra-
tives, like those written by John Barth and Thomas Pynchon, scep-
ticism is taken so far as to put into question the culturally constructed
nature of subjectivity itself. In such narratives as Barth's Giles Goat-
Boy, far from acting as a hermeneutic authority, subjectivity is shown
to be an intertextual construct incapable of revealing anything but
that which is already known. In the absence of any external author-
ity, the allegorical protagonist is unable to determine whether
meaning is projected or perceived. The modern 'crisis of belief, in
postmodernist allegories, renders unknowable the national destiny
that has been Europe's allegorical legacy to the New World.
In the discussion that follows I offer a brief survey of this inher-
itance, beginning, in the first section, with a survey of the kinds of
allegorical interpretation from which the narrative genre developed.
The distinctive nature of allegorical narrative is produced by the
thematization of these interpretative forms within the context of
the narrative plot. The variety of ways in which allegorical inter-
pretation can be incorporated into a narrative, and the different
kinds of narrative to which this gives rise, is the subject of the
following section. First, it is the origin of allegory as a rhetorical
means of coming to terms with historical and cultural change that
is my focus.1
MODELS OF ALLEGORICAL INTERPRETATION
The earliest recorded instances of allegorical interpretation reveal

that it was used primarily to defend the sacred Homeric myths
from critical attack. There were some who understood the myths in
a literal manner and were outraged by the stories that told of adul-
tery and stealing, lying and deception, among the gods. The poets,
Homer and also Hesiod, were accused of debasing the divine char-
acter of the gods by portraying them in this style. These criticisms
were answered by a reading of the myths as allegorical encodings
of separate stories: stories that expounded moral and ethical lessons,
or explained physical and natural phenomena. In an allegorical
reading, the gods could represent the powers of nature or the fac-
ulties of the human body, as they do in the interpretation given by
Metrodorus of Lampsacus, for example.2 From this initially defen-
sive role of demonstrating the value of the sacred myths, allegorical
interpretation developed an increasingly complex character. For
allegory was perceived as an effective means of preserving the rele-
vance of the sacred texts in the face of inevitable cultural change.
More and more, the divine beings described by Homer and Hesiod
were deprived of any historical reality and were thought of as repre-
senting knowledge that was valuable to have. So rather than being
worthwhile because they make available knowledge about divine
beings, the myths were valued for the lessons they taught about the
practice of justice, instances of wisdom, models of good behaviour
and explanations about the nature of the world, lessons that are
represented by the gods and the stories they have to tell. The literal
stories have value only in so far as they support and figure forth
these more abstract, broadly pedagogical, narratives.
The philosophical schools, and particularly the Stoics, found that
allegorical interpretation offered them a powerful vehicle for dis-
seminating their views. Allegorical readings of the myths could
make available the authority of an old and established religion while
representing the details of a new set of philosophical ideas. Homer
and Hesiod were to be praised for their exceptional wisdom in
anticipating Stoic ideas in the figurative details of their poetry. The
details of mythological narratives are, in such allegorical interpre-
tations, related point by point and image by image to the moral
or ethical or physiological doctrines encoded in an external philo-
sophical narrative. In this way, the meaning of the sacred myths
was seen to be not intrinsic to the texts themselves but dependent
upon the prescriptions of the interpreter. Sacred meaning was thus

rendered indeterminate: a number of distinct significances could
be imported to explain the meaning of the same mythical narrative.
So while changes in patterns of belief and the emergence of new
schools of philosophical thought were not perceived as crises in
Hellenistic culture, since these new ideas were adapted and pre-
sented through the familiar discourses of Homeric poetry, the vio-
lence done to the authority of the poets and the literal fabric of the
myths was significant.
Allegorical interpretation became such an entrenched method in
classical hermeneutics that in the work of Cicero and later rhetor-
icians allegory itself is subject to rhetorical analysis. Cicero treats
allegory not simply as a way of interpreting texts, the meanings of
which have become indistinct or otherwise problematical, but as a
style of rhetoric that characterizes texts which demand interpre-
tation. So Cicero perceived allegory as a quality inherent in certain
kinds of texts. This is a new departure from earlier uses of allegory
which treated allegorical interpretation as quite separate from the
text to which it was applied. But while Cicero described allegory as
a style of rhetoric that invites interpretation, he emphasized that the
meaning generated by interpretation would always be a subjective
meaning determined by the interpreter and not by the text. So the
text was empowered to determine the hermeneutic activity of its
interpreter but not the results of that interpretative activity, in
Cicero's analysis.3 The technique by which the allegorical text pre-
scribes its own interpretation is allusion; the specification of exam-
ples or comparisons or contrasts, within the narrative, points to the
hermeneutic connections that the interpreter is required to make.
Meaning is thus consciously hidden or made indeterminate by the
writer who uses an allegorical style of rhetoric. The classical legacy
for subsequent theories of allegory lies in the predominant assump-
tion that meaning is extrinsic to the text (be that a sacred or secular
text) and that allegory describes the interpretative activity that pro-
duces a connection between narrative details and their extrinsic
significances.
Perhaps the best known of early Jewish writers to use an allegor-
ical method of interpretation, and the only Jewish allegorist in the
classical sense, is Philo Judaeus. And the dilemma to which he
applied his allegorical activity was the problem of reconciling the
Greek philosophy dominant in his contemporary Alexandria with
the Mosaic writings. So Philo was confronted with the same kind of
issue as faced the Homeric apologists. But where the Homeric myths
were challenged by the literalism of their readers, the significance
of the Pentateuch was challenged by the powerful cultural influence
of adopted Greek ideas. The outcome, so far as the development of
allegory was concerned, was largely a repetition of the classical
deployment of allegorical interpretation. To Moses was attributed
an 'allegorical' intention: in the biblical stories, it was argued, he
anticipated later philosophical concepts and doctrines. The biblical
stories were valued less for themselves or their literal plots than
for the abstract meanings encoded in their figurative texture; Philo,
in fact, termed his allegorical practice the method of the Greek
mysteries.4 As a consequence of his devaluation of the literal 'surface'
of the sacred text, Philo was able to achieve a wholesale appropria-
tion of the Mosaic Law which he transformed into a revealed divine
philosophy. And this was made possible by the use of allegorical
interpretation.
Philo likened the sacred text to a living creature, possessed of a
literal body and a divine soul.5 The purpose of interpretation, then,
was seen to be the penetration of the literal body in order to reveal
the spiritual meaning intentionally encoded within. To read only in
terms of the literal is to reveal a lack of spiritual insight and an
impious disregard for the divine intention.6 Philo assumes that
Scripture is informed by a benevolent divine intention and this
benevolent divinity constrains the range of possible meanings that
can be found in the sacred writings. All scriptural meanings must
be worthy of God, as their divine originator, and they must be
beneficial to humanity. Any significances that appear to be incon-
sistent with these overriding principles must be intended, by God,
to be interpreted figuratively, by which Philo means allegorically,
to reveal their 'true' meaning. All of Scripture has a secondary
transcendental meaning, according to Philo, but in most cases this
secondary significance is easily discerned. Only when the divine
meaning is especially hidden do inconsistencies and absurdities
appear in the sacred text. Philo's main contribution to the history of
allegorical theorizing is his attempt to systematize the varieties of
figurative meaning that Scripture can possess.7
He distinguished two 'levels' of figurative reference: the mystical
and the moral. The mystical dimension of Scripture relates to the
universal meaning of the divine mystery and so is of collective
significance. In contrast, the moral aspect of the sacred text refers to
the individual and interior meaning of divine revelation and relates
to the relevance of that revelation for the development and spiritual

progression of the individual soul.8 Philo's method of scriptural
exegesis remained essentially that which originated with the clas-
sical allegorists. Each event depicted in the sacred writings was
related to a distinct phase in either the spiritual destiny of Israel or
in the progression of the soul and its relation to the phenomenal
world. The literal narrative of Scripture was valued as the inspired
creation of God but this narrative of literal events and personalities
was held to be significant only in so far as it revealed a second-
ary meaning of divine intent. And this secondary meaning, as
the important aspect of the text, was largely independent of its
literal vehicle. Allegorical interpretation held distinct the body and
the soul of Scripture, decoding the one in order to discover the
other. Philo shared the classical view that meaning is not intrinsic
to the literal sense of the sacred text but can be detached from it.
He also shared the view that, while absurdities and inconsistencies
are not to be tolerated in the interpretation of Scripture, within
this constraint the sacred book is not bound in terms of what it
can signify; and this view he shared with the earlier rabbinical
exegetes who practised a style of allegorical interpretation known
as 'midrash'.
Rabbinical exegesis responded to the threat posed to the sacred
character of the Torah by the cultural invasions of Greece and Rome
not by adapting the sacred text to these new intellectual forces but
by seeking to protect the inviolability of the sacred book. The Torah
was to be seen to affect every aspect of life and its authority was to
be disseminated in every conceivable way. The rabbis sought to
achieve this by multiplying their interpretations of the Torah. The
laws, precepts and ordinances of the sacred text were to be inter-
preted from every angle, literal and spiritual, so as to establish the
absolute authority of the Torah within the culture of Judea. Contem-
porary currents of thought, collective aspirations and cultural tra-
ditions, all were to be imbued with the authority of the sacred text.9
Midrash arose from these conditions. There are two primary forms
of midrash: halakah, which is used to deduce or to elucidate the
legal points and principles that are encoded in the sacred text; and
aggadah, which is a homiletical method of exegesis used to reveal
the religious and nationalistic significances of Scripture. Aggadic
midrash is more closely related to the kind of allegorical interpre-
tation practised by Philo Judaeus, though Philo was disowned by
the rabbis and his work ignored; aggadah is described by The Jewish
Encyclopedia as 'the exegetical amplification of a Biblical passage

and the development of a new thought based thereupon'.10
The development of new thought inspired by the sacred text was,
however, bound by principles for proper interpretation, though these
principles allowed an enormous amount of freedom to the midrashic
interpreter. First, the sacred text may be read as revealing prophetic
statements which are realized in current historical events so that
the significance of Scripture can be seen to reside in the foreshadow-
ing of what is now coming to pass. Secondly, several passages of
Scripture, chosen by the exegete, can be brought together to explain
a specific passage of the Torah so that a pattern of internal allusions
and echoes can be discerned which lends meaning to each of the
constituent parts. Thirdly, textual obscurities can be explained and
enlarged by narrative interpolations or even alterations which are
added by the interpreter. These interpolations can even be fictional,
so long as they are directed towards expanding the meaning and
relevance of the sacred book. Midrash, in this way, seeks new ideas
as well as an authoritative confirmation of what is already known,
from the Torah.
The proliferation of divine meanings was the intention of mid-
rashic interpretation. According to the rabbis, the spiritual truth of
Scripture was rich enough to sustain as many interpretations as
its human interpreters could devise. This meant that all aspects of
meaning - Judaic and 'foreign' (whether from Greece, Rome or
wherever) - could and would be subsumed by the sacred Jewish
book. So far as the Torah could take account of foreign intellectual
developments, the authority of the book to speak for Judaic culture
was assured. The cultural authority of the Torah as the repository
of all conceivable meanings was separated by the practitioners of
midrash from considerations of historical or literal veracity. As J.
Duncan Derrett argues, midrashic exegetes approached Scripture
with an 'as if kind of logic: they cited the sacred text 'as if it were
historically true, they quoted scriptural passages as if they were
true regardless of their original contexts.11 Like the more extreme
classical allegorists, the midrashic writers had little regard for the
historical status of the literal sense of the sacred text. They assumed
an arbitrary form of signification which linked the literal to the
figurative dimensions of the text and, further, they assumed that
correctness of interpretation was dependent upon the divine inten-
tionality of the text coupled with the divine guidance of the inter-
preter. In order to preserve the faith and cultural unity of a people
returned from exile, the midrashic interpreters relied on faith to

support and to lend authority to their amplification of the cultural
role of the sacred book.
The sharpest contrast between Judaic and Christian styles of
allegorical rhetoric is to be found in their opposed attitudes to-
wards the literal sense of Scripture. Christian allegorism never
departs from a strong commitment to the historical reality and
veracity of the sacred text. For this commitment to history is the
strategy by which Christian writers came to terms with the major
cultural crisis facing them: Hebrew hostility and aggression towards
Judaeo-Christianity.12
The early Christian writers explained the new revelation through
Christ as the inevitable development of redemptive history and as
evidence for this view of historical progression they interpreted the
Old Testament for divine foreshadowings of the new dispensation.
So, the earliest instance of the term allegory in Christian exegesis
occurs in Galatians 4:24 where St Paul explains that Abraham's two
sons signify the two covenants. One son is born of a bondwoman,
the other is born to a freewoman which St Paul interprets as 'an
allegory: for these are the two covenants'. The conflict between the
two sons, Ishmael and Isaac, provides St Paul with an explanatory
context within which to view the contemporary persecution of
Christians: 'But as then he that was born after the flesh persecuted
him that was born after the spirit, even so it is now' (Gal. 4:29). In
St Paul's deployment of allegorical interpretation - properly called
typology - the Old Testament is stripped of its Judaistic meaning
and is revealed to be the shadow or typos of future events: the
events depicted by the New Testament. The two Testaments are
assumed to share a single divine 'spirit' which is encoded within
the figurative texture of the narratives but this spirit is determined
by the character of the New Testament. The old Law is exposed as
the foreshadowing of a covenant of grace; salvation through works
is subordinated to redemption through faith. Here as elsewhere, the
two Testaments are linked by a pattern of typological repetition:
the persecution of Christians by Hebrews has been foreshadowed
by the persecution of the Hebrews in Egypt. And what forges these
links between the two books is the historical parallel, the similarity
of existential circumstances, in which they are involved. That typo-
logical allegory is grounded in the assumption that textual figures
also possess a real historical status is emphasized by A. C. Charity
in his analysis of Christian typology.
One thing does not mean another in typology: it involves it, or

has inferences for it, or suggests it, and it does all these things for
no other reason than that there is a real, existential, parallel, as
well as a certain historical dependency and continuity between
the events which typology relates.13
The early Christian writers, in Charity's view, use past events as a

way of articulating the new and of revealing the significance of the
past for the present moment and for the future.
Typology is a kind of allegorical interpretation and it departs
from other forms of allegory in that it most emphatically does not
assume an arbitrary relationship between the figurative and spiritual
dimensions of the sacred text. Interpretation serves to reveal an
historical continuity which exists as the real and powerful meaning
inherent in Scripture. The significances at which the interpreter
arrives are determined not by the individual exegete (whether in-
spired or not) but by the intrinsic meanings contained in the Bible.
This is an important point because this is one of the issues over
which Catholic and Protestant interpreters were to disagree so radic-
ally, and as such it has significant implications for the style of alle-
gorical intepretation adopted by the American Puritan writers. For
the early Christian interpreters of the two Testaments, interpreta-
tion was authorized by the authority of the sacred book.
The Christian Apologists wrought the first major departure from
the original Pauline conception of Christian allegorism. They ex-
tended the domain of allegorical interpretation from the sacred book
to include the 'book of nature', temporal history and human reason
as well. They applied the techniques of allegorical interpretation to
all of God's creation. But this created difficulties, because the in-
terpretation of textual rhetoric differs from the interpretation of
corporeal signs, most obviously in the fact that textual rhetoric is
consciously figurative. So, in the work of Justin Martyr, particularly,
we find an attempt to transform nature, history and rationality into
rhetorical figures. Just as the two Testaments share the same divine
spirit, Justin argues, so before the Advent a divine spirit or logos
was disseminated among all humanity. This interpretation allows
Justin then to propose an assimilation of Christian with pagan and
Hebrew religious or intellectual cultures. For if all rational crea-
tures possess the divine spirit or logos then pagan philosophers and
Hebrew rabbis all were inspired by the same transcendental forces
as Christians. Before Christ's advent, the marks of God were to be
found in 'the book of nature and also in the inner deliverances of

their reason'.14 And these discoveries inspired their writings in a
way compatible with the ideas of Christianity. But they are not
equivalent to Christianity; only Christ Himself manifested the entire
truth and so earlier, pre-Christian writers had access only to a partial
interpretation of the divine truth.
The diversification of allegorical interpretation created problems
of terminological obscurity. The allegorical had come to name the
spiritual dimension of the sacred book to which the narrative's
figures referred. This spiritual dimension, however, was variously
described as partial or whole, as prefiguration or as fulfilment, as
mystical or as moral, as individual or collective in its significance.
The contribution of Origen of Alexandria, the single most influen-
tial patristic writer of allegorical interpretation, to the history of
allegorical theory is his attempt to organize and systematize the
varieties of allegorical rhetoric. As we have seen, he was not the
first to attempt such a rationalization: Philo Judaeus had attempted
the same thing in regard to classical and Hebrew allegorism.
Origen was motivated in this task by what he perceived as the
threat posed by several forms of 'false' interpretation. First, there
was a style of Hebrew exegesis that relied upon literal interpreta-
tion and claimed to be awaiting the fulfillment of literal scriptural
prophecies; secondly, Gnosticism adhered to the literal sense of
Scripture and so revealed inconsistencies in the Old Testament; and
then there were 'simple' Christians who rejected the spiritual inter-
pretation of Scripture in favour of a literal reading and so were guilty
of impiety.15 These interpretations appeared 'false' from Origen's
perspective because they all refused the allegorical style of interpre-
tation which removed or at least normalized inconsistencies between
the Old and New Testaments. These false methods of interpretation
placed in question again the status of the Old Testament within the
new dispensation of Christianity at a time when Christian allegorism
was coming under attack by pagans like Celsus. In order to establish
the authority of allegorical interpretation, Origen set out to organize
the various styles of spiritual exegesis into a methodical sequence.
In the Periarchon he describes a trichotomy of spiritual meaning.
The 'somatic' signifies the obvious meaning of a figurative expres-
sion; the 'psychic' denotes the significance of the figure for the in-
dividual Christian soul; and the 'pneumatic' refers to the mystical
significance of the figure.16 He proposes another trichotomy of alle-
gorical meanings, in the same work, which is based upon a scale of
spiritual awareness. Correspondingly, the 'simple' man is edified

by the 'flesh' of Scripture; those who have progressed some way
towards spiritual enlightenment are edified by the 'soul' of Scripture;
and the 'perfect' soul is edified by the 'spirit' of the sacred book.
The three parts of man - body, soul and spirit - are interpreted by
Origen as a sign intended by God to indicate the way to salvation
through the figurative connection between these human parts and
the mystical dimensions of Scripture.
In conjunction with his work of systematizing the styles of spiritual
exegesis, Origen endeavoured to produce his own scheme for the
correct figurative interpretation of the spiritual dimension of Scrip-
ture. It is the Christological dimension of Scripture which lies at the
centre of Origen's own practice of allegorical interpretation. He
describes two ways of reading the sacred book, both of which are
based upon the decoding of a secondary level of reference beyond
the literal or historically true. First, the 'moral' refers to the Church
and to the truths of the faith; secondly, the 'mystical' or Christie
meaning refers to an ascetic dimension of meaning and figures the
progress of the redeemed soul towards God. In both cases, Christ
mediates between the literal and secondary meanings of Scripture.
Christ communicates to the inspired interpreter a spiritual under-
standing of the sacred book. Origen argues that Christ represents a
principle of unity in the Testaments which reflects the relation of
human and divine elements in His incarnate body.17 Fundamentally,
in Origen's view, there are only two dimensions to the meaning of
Scripture - the literal and the Christological - but the Christological
sense is represented in as many aspects as Christ presents. The
Christological senses, revealed in the Pauline writings, Origen sought
to systematize in his own exegetical practice into the Christie, eccle-
siastical, mystical and eschatological significances.
Origen, like many of his predecessors, assumes that the rhetorical
structure of Scripture reflects the metaphysical structure of the world.
The spiritual meaning of the New Testament matches the 'carnal'
Law of the Old Testament; the redemptive significance of the whole
Bible sanctifies the literal text: like Christ in His Advent, the Bible is
the incarnation of God, the logos, the force that links the two dimen-
sions of meaning. The status accorded the logos in Christian exegesis
serves to distinguish Christian from classical and Judaistic allegorism.
The latter share a common assumption that allegorical interpretation
is based upon the identification of an arbitrary signifying relationship
between the figure and its referent. But for Christian interpreters of
the two Testaments, the allegorical referent was determined from

the start: according to the logic of typological allegory, Christ is
represented in the Old Testament and in the New Testament He is
present. Christ, as the subject of typological interpretation, links the
two sacred books and this typological link is reinforced by the
mystical interpretation of the logos which is assumed to constitute
the spiritual dimension of meaning of both texts. This logocentric
prescription for scriptural meaning is extended, in Origen's writ-
ings, to include the interpreter also. Origen claims that understand-
ing of the allegorical senses of Scripture is enabled by the grace of
the Holy Spirit operating upon the soul of the exegete. Christ, the
spiritual significance of the Bible personified, appeals to the image
of God which resides in the soul of every Christian and so empowers
the individual to read correctly the spiritual or allegorical meaning
of the sacred book. This determination of the rhetorical relationship
between allegorical figure and referent distinguishes Christian
allegorism from the styles of allegorical intepretation that preceded
it. Of course, this Christian style of allegory did not displace com-
pletely the more arbitrary style of classical allegorism; often the two
kinds of interpretation are to be found side by side in the same
exegetical exercise. But these distinct styles of allegorism offered
quite different models to those writers who looked to allegorical
interpretation for clues to the writing of allegorical narratives. It is
to their work that we now turn.
THE DEVELOPMENT OF ALLEGORICAL LITERATURE
The incorporation of styles of interpretation that are known as

'allegorical' into fully-fledged literary narratives has resulted in a
basic confusion that is the legacy of allegorical theorists today.
Allegory has come to name both interpretative methods and the
abstract meaning or 'moral' that is generated by those interpreta-
tions. So the form and the substance of allegory have become hope-
lessly confused. Allegory describes a style of rhetoric and the
narrative substance represented by that rhetoric. This is an ironic
fate for the allegorical genre because, more than any other literary
genre, allegory thematizes the complexity of interpretative prac-
tices and so reveals what is, ultimately, the arbitrary character of all
determinations of meaning. Rather than present a simple 'moral',
allegories instead tend to focus upon the difficulties inherent in the

attempt to represent a single meaning as the significance of any
sign. This awareness of duplicity and indeterminacy dates from the
Christian reinterpretation of the Old Testament and the inscription
of 'doubleness' as an intrinsic part of the meaning of the sacred
book. And if the Bible is not immune from ambiguity and duplicity,
then secular signs certainly are not either. Where the Bible can at
least claim a transcendental authorship, guiding its signifying pat-
terns to a preordained end, the signs manifest in temporal history
and unredeemed nature have a more contingent claim to divine
intentionality and hence issue a more demanding imperative for
rigorous interpretation. The secular genre of allegorical narrative
addresses the implications of this imperative by incorporating the
rhetorical styles once reserved for the interpretation of sacred books
into temporal plots that are concerned with the interpretation of
human history and the corporeal world. The ways in which these
hermeneutic modes are thematized by individual allegorical narrat-
ives are many, and account for the diversity and richness of alle-
gory as a literary genre. Although the development of allegorical
literature out of the tradition of allegorical interpretation may lead
one to suspect that allegory is no more than applied exegesis, the
richness of the allegorical literary canon denies this. In what fol-
lows, I offer a survey of the various kinds of narrative that go by
the name of allegory. But the allegorical form with which I begin,
the homily, does in fact present us with what is, in effect, applied
exegesis or dramatized moralities with little aesthetic value.
As I noted at the end of the previous section, the development of
a specifically Christian style of biblical interpretation did not put a
stop to interpretation in the classical tradition. In fact, so powerful
was (and still is) the influence of classical allegorism that the Bible
was subjected to interpretation in this style. The early homiletical
narratives abound with examples of scriptural tropes, taken out of
the context of the scriptural narrative, and interpreted as complex
figurative statements of Christian dogma. Usually it was moral lore
that was expounded in this fashion which was perceived to be
comprehensible to laymen as well as to clerics.
An example of this moralization of scriptural tropes is to be found
in Jacob's Well, a treatise dealing with penitential lore, which incor-
porates an interpretation of the Pool of Bethesda (John 5:2-4) and
its five porches. Jacob's Well describes the five porches as being akin
to the five 'wyttes' of the soul: understanding, desire, delight, mind
and will. The pool is likened to the conscience, and the angel the
preacher of God's word who casts out corrupt water with the 'scoop
of penance'. The five spiritual 'wits' are, in turn, identified with the
five physical senses: sight with understanding, hearing with desire,
taste with delight, smell with lust, and feeling with will. We are
warned that it is through the five 'porches' of the physical senses
that the soul is incited to sin.18 Each of the elements of the biblical
image is related in a one-to-one correspondence to some aspect of
penitential lore. The narrative interpretation of the figure does not
recognize any claim to authenticity by the original context of St
John's Gospel but claims to offer an illustration of Christian dogma
that is sanctioned by the biblical text. In this respect, Jacob's Well
resembles the kind of interpretation practised by the rabbinical
practitioners of midrash. The Christian homily reflects a similar
disregard for historical or textual veracity but instead seeks to expand
the significance of Scripture into everyday life through the allegor-
ical interpretation of sacred rhetoric. That the meaning discovered
is arbitrary in regard to the biblical image is less important to homi-
letical writers than the lived morality that is their imported concern
and the constructed sphere of reference.
The homiletical use of allegorical interpretation is not exclusive
to medieval treatises; as George Owst has shown in his classic study
of pulpit rhetoric, the style of pulpit moralization changed little
from Catholic to Protestant usages.19 The same exegetical approach
characterizes many of the sermons preached in colonial America.
John Cotton, one of the most renowned of colonial preachers, used
the homiletical style of allegorical rhetoric to describe the process
of conversion in God's Mercie Mixed with His Justice or His Peoples
Deliverance in Times of Danger (1641). Drawing on the scriptural
imagery of Acts 16 and Psalms 24, Cotton likens the effect of the
preacher's inspired word upon the hearer to God's entrance into
the soul; to accept Christ is to open the door of the soul to God. '[I]f
hee be opened unto you . . . you have a strong entrance into your
own salvation.' In His mercy, God will knock on that door which
is the human heart with 'the hammer of his word' but he breaks
open that door through the 'favour of Jesus'.20 In the next colonial
generation after Cotton, Joshua Moody presented in his Artillery
Sermon of 1674 a sustained image that describes all of human life,
not just the experience of conversion and salvation, in terms of the
figure of warfare. Moody explained why he was compelled to use
this technique, thus:
The Lord takes care to make us spiritual in all our Imployments,

by spiritualizing all our Imployments.... [T]he Lord is in his word
teaching us by such familiar and known Metaphors taken from
those Callings that we are versed in.21
In examples such as these, figures taken from the Bible are mor-
lized according to orthodox Christian dogma. The value of the
biblical image lies less in its original sacred context than in the
significance it acquires after interpretation. How this significance is
discovered is neither described nor discussed; the technique of inter-
pretation itself has value only in so far as it is able to reveal moral
and spiritual truths in line with Christian dogma. The dogmatic
meanings of scriptural images are assumed to reside in an obvious
and predictable way within the textual figures, and so their discovery
through interpretation does not warrant discussion. But the mean-
ings obtained in these homiletical texts are arbitrary with regard to
the original context from which the figurative expressions are taken;
the reluctance of such allegorical interpreters to take note explicitly
of their hermeneutic practice might well be read as an unwillingness
to recognize the arbitrariness of the interpreted meanings of which
they write.
Within the kind of homiletical interpretation represented in ser-
mons and treatises, the original text disappears and is supplanted
by an interpreted version of itself. This is in line with the valuing
of biblical images for their capacity to carry or to communicate an
abstract meaning. But in fully-fledged allegorical narratives, not only
the original textual figures but also the secondary commentary upon
them is incorporated into the narrative texture. The two are incor-
porated into a single narrative continuum: the text is presented and
subsequently is interpreted. In this way, Prudentius's narrative
departs from the homiletical texts we have been considering. Aes-
thetic values are of much greater importance in the Psychomachia
which, while it does not compare in sophistication with the work of
later allegorists like Chaucer and Spenser, does have significant
literary or aesthetic qualities in terms of narrative craft, the use of
symbolism and the representation of psychological conflict. So we
find in the preface to Prudentius's Psychomachia that a biblical episode
is quoted and the conditions under which it will be interpreted are
set out. Prudentius chooses the same passage from the Old Testa-
ment as is interpreted by St Paul in Galatians (discussed in the
previous section): Lot's rescue from the Sodomites by Abraham and
Sara's miraculous conception. These scriptural events are chosen as

paradigmatic of the battle between personified vices and virtues
which is described in the main narrative. The biblical story is inter-
preted as
a model for our life to trace again with true measure, showing
that we must watch in the armour of faithful hearts, and that
every part of our body which is in captivity and enslaved to foul
desire must be set free... .n
Sara's angelic conception is seen as an image of the fertility of the

Holy Spirit which is able to enter and redeem the souls of the
faithful. Physical conception is made to signify spiritual regenera-
tion. Sara's biblical experience offers 'a model for our life to trace
again'. And in this way the narrative invokes scriptural authority
for the interpretation of biblical figures in terms of the moral and
spiritual values they are said to represent. The values of lived
morality, and the potential for salvation to be found by the faithful
in the biblical stories motivate the allegorical interpretations repre-
sented in the Psychomachia.
As each of the Vices are defeated by a corresponding Virtue,
victory is celebrated in the quotation of the biblical model which
has been imitated. So Chastity's victory over Lust is crowned with
a triumphant speech praising Judith who destroyed lust in the form
of Holofernes, the Assyrian king. Where Pride boasts of her sover-
eignty over all men and cites the expulsion of Adam from Eden as
evidence of her power, Lowliness quotes David's victory over
Goliath and so defeats her. The mystical meaning of each encounter
is prescribed by each of the Virtues as the victory of Christ in a
battle for the individual soul. The Virtues appropriate the signifi-
cance of each battle for Christ as they seek an end to conflict in the
reconcilation of the flesh and the spirit. This reconciliation is fig-
ured, within the narrative, by the building of a temple in which
Wisdom is enthroned: an image which signifies the acceptance of
Christ by the individual soul. In the manner prescribed by patristic
exegetes like Origen of Alexandria, the allegory of the Psychomachia
reveals the Christological significance of Scripture and the relevance
of this dimension of meaning for the salvation of souls.
The Psychomachia thematizes the activity of allegorical interpre-
tation in a way that is impossible within the limits of homiletical
writings. Prudentius has the scope to create fictional characters who
then dramatize the complexities involved in interpreting the biblical

text. Such subtlety contributes importantly to the literary status of
the text and is impossible within the limited range of a sermon or
treatise. But by combining the fictional or literary with the serious
business of interpreting the spiritual significances of sacred books
Prudentius contributed to the beginnings of a tradition of secular
allegory, where the thematization of interpretation was directed
less at the certainties described in Scripture than towards the am-
biguities and uncertainties of human life. The corporeal world and
temporal experience became the focus of a style of allegorical inter-
pretation which seeks in the signs of nature and the events of his-
tory clues to the soul's ultimate destiny. Though the nature of this
spiritual destiny is prescribed in the sacred books, the place of the
individual within the grand sweep of providential history is most
at issue in the tradition of allegorical narratives that has emerged
since Prudentius's groundbreaking narrative. Importantly for the
kind of allegorical narrative that developed in America, Prudentius
incorporated the practice of typological interpretation, as an atti-
tude of mind or way of viewing the world, into the substance of his
narrative. The battle between the Vices and Virtues is, exegetically
speaking, a conflict between classical (pagan) and Christian (typo-
logical) allegory. The Vices seek an arbitrary one-to-one correspond-
ence between words and things; the Virtues seek a Christ-centred
and scripturally based interpretation of the meaning of the signs
around them. The victory, then, of typology over other allegorical
forms can be seen as Prudentius's response to the resurgence of
paganism among his contemporaries. Prudentius's engagement in
the cultural crisis of his time then takes the form of an allegorical
exploration of competing world-views which are represented as
mutually exclusive hermeneutic endeavours.23
The preface to the Psychomachia makes reference to the biblical
story of Abraham and Sara as a model to be repeated in the future
and in our own lives. The typological significance of the story re-
sides in the idea that just as these biblical figures were touched by
God, so may we experience the grace of the Holy Spirit if we estab-
lish in our hearts and minds a spiritual 'temple of Wisdom' akin to
that which the narrative, echoing the earlier description of Abraham's
tent, finally constructs. The narrative process of the Psychomachia,
then, seeks to bring together the biblical past and the reader's present
in the service of future salvation. The biblical story is a fable which
prefigures a future fulfilment in the fictional victory of the narrative's
Virtues over the Vices, and this victory foreshadows a future victory
over sin within the soul of the redeemed individual. Thus is the
pattern of typological interpretation, originally applied to the two
Testaments, incorporated into the narrative of a secular text.
The narrative process is organized around the conflict between
the personified Vices and Virtues and seeks reconciliation through
the victory of the Christian Virtues. The typological understanding
of providential history and its determination of the soul's destiny is
often thematized by the allegorical narrative in such a way. That is,
the reconciliation of competing narrative elements and a typolo-
gical understanding of those elements are often represented as iden-
tical within the allegorical narrative. It is in this way that typology
emerges as the privileged and so authoritative hermeneutic mode.
An example of this thematization of typological interpretation,
in a fully-fledged literary work, is offered by William Langland's
medieval poem, Piers Plowman. In this narrative, the plot is motiv-
ated by the protagonist's quest for 'Dowel'. In his search, Will has
recourse to a number of potential advisers and guides - Wit, Clergy,
Dame Studie - but they all prove inadequate to his purposes. For
none of them inform him that Dowel is neither a person nor a thing
but a verb, to Do-wel. The active nature of Dowel becomes appar-
ent only when the narrative appeals to the anterior text of Scripture
through characters such as Haukyn, Piers and Abraham, who possess
explicit biblical significances. These characters introduce to the nar-
rative a typological model of interpretation which is unavailable to
personifications. Personifications reveal their significance through a
one-to-one correspondence between their names and their attributes.
Personifications emerged from the classical allegorical tradition and,
in fact, this trope was subject to extensive analysis by the classical
rhetoricians. Personifications are essentially static, bound by the
signifying limits of the concept that determines them. Characters
which are typologically determined, in contrast, are involved in a
dynamic historical process.
As in the Psychomachia, the figure of Abraham foreshadows the
Christie operations of faith under the new dispensation: he repre-
sents literally the old Law and spiritually the covenant of faith.
And the example of Abraham offers the promise of future salvation
to individual believers. As a narrative trope, Abraham participates
in the past, the present and the projected future. In Piers Plowman,
not only Abraham and Haukyn but especially Piers himself intro-
duce Will, the protagonist, to the potential power of typological
interpretation. The personification, Conscience, explains to Will that

Christ represents many things and that the significance of the pri-
mary images of the narrative is grounded in Christ-the-Zogos. But it
is the figurally constructed character of Piers the Plowman who
repeats the typologically significant events in the life of Christ and
by repeating these acts Piers draws together the typological mean-
ings of the sacred events. At first Piers, bloodstained and bearing a
cross, imitates 'Jesus the justere'. This narrative image, which has
been represented in the narrative by figures like the various knights
of the poem, the King's knights, the true knight of Holy Church,
and Conscience, now takes on an additional spiritual, Christological,
meaning. And to underline this point, the narrator tells us that it is
through the figure of the knight, who possesses the character or the
'kynde' of a conqueror, that Jesus has revealed to mankind the new
covenant: 'And there bigan God of his grace to do wel.'24 So the
person Dowel whom Will has been misguidedly seeking is revealed
to be the conqueror of sin, Jesus. But in the context of this new law
of grace, Jesus claims a new name: not Dowel but 'Dobet'. Yet it is
as the conqueror of death, and the harrower of Hell, that Christ's
nature is most fully revealed as 'Dobest'. And because Piers under-
stands these three dimensions of typological meaning - Dowel, Dobet
and Dobest - Christ grants a pardon to Piers. Christ links the three
concepts, Dowel, Dobet and Dobest; he offers a spiritual archetype
for the knight figures of the poem and other defenders of the true
faith; and he reveals the spiritual significance of temporal history as
he progresses from Filius Marie to King of Judea, to redeemer and
the bringer of pardon. Each of the principal images or concepts of
the narrative gain in significance as they acquire additional con-
textual meanings and they are resignified in terms of this web of
Christological significances which reside in Scripture. Piers reads
both the sacred book and the world in which he operates as mean-
ingful purely in typological terms and as a consequence it is he who
is able to make sense most fully of that world which appears so
perplexing to characters like Will. Only typological interpretation
provides access to the logic according to which the fictional world
operates. It is significant that representatives of the Church who are
sought out by Will in the course of his quest are unable to pro-
vide this insight. Part of Langland's scathing attack on abuses of
Church power and the corruption of the clergy is articulated by the
device of representing characters such as Lady Holy Church and
Clergy as personifications (associated so closely with pagan forms
of interpretation) and not as typologically represented characters -

the latter form of representation being reserved for Piers the
Plowman alone. In this way Langland responds to the crisis both
within the Church and affecting his culture at large. It is with sub-
tlety that Langland represents his perception of the critical cultural
conditions in which he lived and this subtlety is made possible by
the historical distinction between pagan allegorism and Christian
typology.
The narrative of Piers Plowman achieves a resolution of the conflicts
which have been explored in the plot by recourse to the anterior,
sacred text. Above, I remarked that one of the most important dis-
tinctions between Christian allegory, on the one hand, and classical
and Judaistic allegory, on the other, is that where the latter styles
are inherently arbitrary when it comes to assigning meanings to
allegorical figures, Christian allegory is determined from the start
by the assumption of a pervasive Christological dimension of mean-
ing which lends significance to the narrative of Scripture and, by
extension, to the things of nature and the events of history. A secular
text such as Piers Plowman shares this commitment to a pervasive
set of Christological meanings but it is unable to demonstrate a
divinely intended dimension of meaning within the terms of its
own literal narrative. And so it has recourse to the sacred text of
Scripture, drawing into its narrative plot characters, events and
images which have already been interpreted for their Christological
significances within the context of biblical exegesis. The determina-
tion of the meaning of Piers Plowman therefore depends upon the
authority of Scripture and makes a strong claim upon the Christian
faith of the individual reader.
The allegorical plot is characterized by the displacement of mean-
ing into a succession of narrative tropes. The plot is then motivated
by the activity of interpreting these figures as part of the quest for
an explanatory context that will reconcile competing signs into a
self-consistent signifying pattern. This pattern, in the case of Piers
Plowman (as for so many allegorical narratives of the medieval and
Renaissance periods), is the pattern created by repetition within a
providentially guided history. So allegory is motivated primarily
by the desire for referential unity, a unity which is thematized as
the 'redemption' of the narrative's semantically incomplete signs.
This desire is sublimated into hermeneutic activity and is satisfied
only when the narrative displaces its own interpretative activity into
the prior activity of interpreting an anterior scriptural authority.
Referential unity is achieved among the narrative signs of Piers

Plowman, but only through the narrative's recourse to a prior text
- the Bible. And this means that even Christological interpretation
is revealed to be fundamentally arbitrary, because it depends cru-
cially upon the reader's belief in the spiritual authority of Scripture.
There is an interesting parallel to be made between this allegorical
narrative impulse and Augustine's description of the way in which
the figurative language of Scripture operates. Jon Whitman emphas-
ises this aspect of Augustine's thought about the seeming indeter-
minacy of the sacred language and its relevance to the development
of allegorical interpretation.
The very basis for the figurative language of Scripture, Augustine

emphasizes, is that the thing a text signifies should in turn signify
another thing, until all signs eventually disappear in God. In this
process of perpetual conversion, res themselves thus become signa,
transitory vehicles moving toward a divine destination (De doctrina
Christiana I, 4; I, 35; II, 10).25
This is a very important point for the future development of

allegorical literature. The 'divine destination' of Augustine's descrip-
tion has to be the sacred book, and allegorical narratives until the
Romantic period used Scripture in this way as part of a displace-
ment strategy that allowed the narrative to deal with interpretative
issues that cannot be resolved in corporeal terms. But the strategy
relies crucially upon the assumption that the reader shares a commit-
ment to the sacred book as being sacred and so capable of function-
ing as a 'divine destination'. As we shall see in the following
chapters, writers of allegory have not always been able to make this
crucially important assumption. It is the absence of a shared com-
mitment to the spiritual authority of the Bible that has produced a
crucial change in the nature of allegory since the Romantic period.
And in the twentieth century, the pervasive lack of faith in the
authority of any text at all has caused further alterations in the
nature of narrative allegory. In post-Romantic narratives, generally,
there can be no recourse to some authoritative anterior text; the
irresolution of the plot cannot be displaced into some transcendent
context and so there is a very perceptible increase in ambiguity and
open-endedness in allegorical narratives of the post-Romantic period.
The first major shift in the character of narrative allegory was
generated by the rise of Protestantism, with its distinctive style of
biblical exegesis, during the period of the Reformation. This shift

was to prove crucial for the practice of allegorical interpretation
and the writing of allegorical narratives by the Puritan colonists of
the New World. For typological interpretation was, as we shall see
in the following chapter, to be the preferred rhetorical style for the
colonial expression of their 'errand into the wilderness' of the New
World.26 Typology solved an important issue for the early Christian
interpreters of the Bible: the question of what was to be the status
of the Hebrew scriptures in relation to the New Testament. But typo-
logy also raised the question of the need for ongoing typological
interpretation. If the New Testament interprets and fulfills the Old
Testament, what then interprets and fulfils the New Testament in
God's ongoing providential history? Another way of phrasing this
question is to ask, if the Old Testament prefigures the New Testa-
ment, what then does the New Testament prefigure? The patristic
response to this question was to argue that the spiritual sense of
Old Testament events is Christ and the spiritual sense of Christ's
deeds is the Church.27 Consequently, it is to the Church that inter-
pretation must look when seeking to discern the significance of the
spiritual dimension of Scripture. The ultimate arbiter of allegorical
readings of the Bible is the Church; in fact, the Church possesses
the authority to legislate every individual's hermeneutic relation-
ship with the sacred text. Where the individual cannot know God's
intention, this uncertainty can be displaced into an authoritative
ecclestiastical tradition.
Protestant exegesis, in sharp contrast, is motivated by the desire
for a direct communion with God which is mediated only by Scrip-
ture, the direct word of God. The role of the Church as translator
of divine significances is assigned, in Protestant exegesis, to the
Holy Ghost, who empowers the chosen individual to understand
God's intentions in relation to their soul's destiny. The correctness
of interpretation cannot be validated by the ecclesiastical institution;
the burden of proof is shifted to the mystical relationship between
the soul and Scripture. The objective validation of interpreted mean-
ing provided by ecclesiastical tradition is supplanted by the sub-
jective authority of the individual Protestant believer. As a result,
Protestant allegorism tends to place a premium upon uncertainty in
matters relating to interpretation. Because human understanding
cannot comprehend the pure and ineffable reality of God, any claim
to absolute knowledge must be symptomatic of hermeneutic delu-
sion. While the typological dimension of an allegorical narrative
(represented by typologically significant images or characters, and

by a typologically structured narrative plot) can indicate the opera-
tions of a providential scheme within temporal history, it cannot
make that scheme present to knowledge. The faithful Protestant
soul has no external means of measuring the progress made within
the scheme of typological repetitions. Only God knows how close
that soul is to salvation. The Protestant interpreter, like Bunyan's
Christian in The Pilgrim's Progress, discovers that Scripture is not so
much a proof-text as a guide to Christ. Scripture reveals the need
for, the way to, and the meaning of, redemption as a progressive
revelation that is guided by faith rather than certain knowledge.
Through the operations of grace, the redeemed soul is released into
a life-process of sanctification in which the application of Scripture
to daily life must continually be rediscovered. Assurance of final
salvation can be neither objectively verified nor actively earned:
assurance is purely a subjective product of interpretation. What is
at stake in Protestant, as opposed to patristic, allegorism is then
quite distinctive. Patristic interpretation of Scripture involves the
gaining or losing of salvation. Protestant interpretation, however,
involves the certitude of election through the workings of grace in
the soul.
Where the emphasis upon the Christological dimension of Scrip-
ture found in patristic exegesis led early typological narratives to
rely upon the reader's faith in the authority of the biblical text, the
emphasis upon the individual authority of the redeemed soul leads
Protestant allegory to depend even more upon the reader's faith.
As I commented above, this reliance upon faith leads to a funda-
mental arbitrariness in the production of narrative meaning. For in
the absence of this necessary faith, the allegorical narrative is seen
to bring together signs and significances that do not inherently and
necessarily belong together. I would like to conclude this brief survey
of the variety of allegorical narrative styles by looking at four of
Nathaniel Hawthorne's short narratives in which he explores the
interpretative liabilities to which Protestant exegesis is prone.
In 'Young Goodman Brown', for instance, Hawthorne deals with
the ambiguities that arise when the individual subject is unable to
interpret authoritatively the fundamental categories of elect and
preterite. Goodman Brown's inability to interpret accurately is indic-
ated by his ignorance of his own place within a typological scheme
of redemption. He expects that he can 'keep covenant' with the
Devil for one night only and then return to his 'Faith' and 'follow
her to Heaven'.28 The diabolical figure who awaits Goodman Brown

takes advantage of his hermeneutic weakness to destroy the last
remnant of faith that Brown possesses. If Brown can see, consorting
with the Devil, those authorities to whom he has always looked for
moral and spiritual guidance, then he is satisfied to place his trust
in the evidence of his senses and never even to suspect that he
might be wrong or that he might be manipulated by malevolent
rather than benevolent spiritual forces. Goodman Brown anticipates
a relationship of simple identity within the sign. He does not dis-
tinguish the literal from the spiritual and expects that the one will
manifest the other. It is the sight of his wife's pink ribbon, fluttering
in a tree near the witches' coven, that convinces him of the depravity
of all souls as he comes to believe that his Faith is quite lost. 'There
is no good on earth; and sin is but a name', he cries. 'Come, devil!
for to thee is this world given' (p. 141). The appearance of absolute
depravity causes Goodman Brown to abandon all hope for redemp-
tion. He assumes that his sight is empowered to perceive only the
correct meaning of the signs with which he is confronted. The subjec-
tive style of interpretation that is his as a Puritan does not allow for
the corruption of perception by sin or by the influence of evil and
there is no external means of hermeneutic legitimation to which he
may have recourse.
It is not only the emphasis upon the subjective in Puritan exegesis
that Hawthorne criticizes. He also addresses the complexities of the
notion that the individual soul has access to the operations of provid-
ential history through the divine pattern of significant repetitions.
The story 'Earth's Holocaust' criticizes the idea that the present
may benefit from a meaningful relationship with the past and in-
stead explores a scenario where the present is shackled to the past,
a dystopian past, such that reform or change are rendered imposs-
ible. Represented by the incineration of all past sources of value -
cultural, familial, political, religious - is a contemporary contempt
for any spiritual value which may inhere in, or be signified by,
material objects. Destruction is associated with purification, material
conflagration with an apotheosis into a pure realm of transcendent
abstraction. It is assumed by the millenialist reformers described by
the narrative that the destruction of the earthly part alone will be
sufficient to create a relationship with the transcendent. So some
destroy their money in the belief that 'universal benevolence, un-
coined and exhaustless, was to be the golden currency of the world'.29
The spiritual values that require no physical representation assume
a value that is identical to itself, a meaning that is transparent and

unequivocal. And the nature of these meanings is prescribed by the
reformers' zeal. That the legislative function reserved for the Bible,
in patristic allegory, and the exegete inspired by the Holy Spirit, in
Puritan allegory, should be appropriated for the subjective judge-
ments laid down by enthusiastic reformers indicates that the sover-
eignty of the subjective has reached its peak. For these millenialists
are committed to the idea that they can themselves control the direc-
tion of history by forcing the spiritual transformation of the material
world in which they live. And this overweening arrogance is con-
demned by the narrator as a 'mockery of the Evil Principle' (p. 357).
The real condition for change is located by the narrator in the
material yet transcendent realm of the individual soul.
The Heart - the Heart - there was the little, yet boundless sphere,
wherein existed the original wrong, of which the crime and mis-
ery of this outward world were merely types. Purify that inner
sphere; and the many shapes of evil that haunt the outward, and
which now seem almost our only realities, will turn to shadowy
phantoms, and vanish of their own accord (p. 357).
The pattern of typological repetition is seen to refer to the repetition

of an original sin and to lead further into perdition rather than
towards salvation. The radical linkage of the present with the past
denies access to accurate subjective (and objective) interpretations
of truth. There is no pattern of promise and fulfilment to be found
in this narrative. Instead, Hawthorne focuses upon the elevation of
subjectivity itself into a timeless, and hence changeless, semantic
pattern within which redemption is impossible.
Hawthorne's retelling of Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress, in "The
Celestial Railroad', also presents a dim view of the relevance of
Puritan typology for nineteenth-century America. Hawthorne's
narrator-questor lacks a guide like Christian's companion, Evangelist,
to identify for him the spiritual significance of the narrative's images.
The liberal, urbane and cultivated protagonist of Hawthorne's story
is accompanied by a modern 'Worldly Wiseman', Mr Smooth-it-
away who habitually interprets in such a way as to reduce all signs
to their basest literal terms. According to Mr Smooth-it-away's
account, then, the entrance to Hell is no more than a volcanic
crater, recently converted into a railroad forge. This, like all of his
explanations, is comforting in its commonsense credibility, which is
congruent with the ideology of liberal progressivism that Smooth-

it-away and the narrator share. The images which bear the burden
of spiritual and moral value in Bunyan's narrative are assessed here
according to the values of fashionable society. In the place of solitary
Christian are 'parties of the first gentry and most respectable people
in the neighborhood, setting forth towards the Celestial City, as
cheerfully as if the pilgrimage were merely a summer tour'.30
The naivete" of Bunyan's Christian also characterizes Hawthorne's
questor as he reports at face-value these reappraisals of the pilgrim-
age. Yet Christian is made aware of the progress he makes in his
journey by the biblical references that constitute a marginal gloss
on his story. No authoritative biblical context is mobilized in "The
Celestial Railroad', though Hawthorne's allegory does use the tech-
niques of typology to point to the irrelevance of typology in the
absence of any substantive faith. Typology no longer situates the
individual within the context of providential history. The past cannot
be repeated and fulfilled in a present moment which does not rec-
ognize, or even notice, the spiritual import of such repetitions. But
the final unmasking of Smooth-it-away's satanic character demon-
strates that while the past may have become irrelevant for the exist-
ential present, it is not yet discontinuous with, or inaccessible to,
the present. And this perhaps offers some cause for future optimism.
But it remains a doubtful optimism.
Hawthorne explores the debasement of typological interpretation
within the context of New England typology in the story, "The Gray
Champion'. The ancient champion of the colonial people represents
the values of temerity, determination, independence and commun-
ity feeling that are recognized to be anachronistic by the oppressed
subjects of Governor Andros. Less 'the type of New England's
hereditary spirit' in the strict exegetical sense of 'type', the gray
champion is exemplary, typical of 'the American under threat'; he
reifies an assurance that 'New England's sons will vindicate their
ancestry'.31 This ancestry, however, is no longer the community of
biblical exiles with which the founding fathers identified, but those
immigrants who willingly departed England to follow the dictates
of their faith. The narrative displays a preference for the human
character of the past, not its ideal spiritual dimension. The vener-
able champion of New England signifies a secular and narrowly
patriotic image of the exemplary American. And so the future he
promises is a future determined by the values of liberal progressiv-
ism. Hawthorne rewrites the history of his Puritan ancestry in such
a way that it promises and fulfils a secular potential that promises

nothing in terms of the future spiritual destiny of the New World.
Hawthorne uses the techniques and vocabulary of typological alle-
gory to question the significance of the Puritan legacy to which he
felt himself heir and also to criticize the spiritual myopia of his own
contemporary America.
Just what was meant by those ancestors, the Puritan colonists of
New England, when they used the rhetoric of allegorical interpre-
tation is the question to which I now turn.
2
Allegory in Colonial
New England
The claim of an Anglo-American cultural tradition to primacy in
the New World was made at the earliest opportunity and in the
harshest of terms. Among the most ubiquitous, if not the most vio-
lent, of these claims is the enduring assumption of importance re-
garding the founding fathers of the Massachusetts Bay colony and
the characteristic style of their rhetoric. I want to explore in this
chapter the ways in which the typological rhetoric of the orthodox
New England clergy was used for hegemonic purposes in order to
claim, if not to preserve, a share of political power in the evolving
colonial government. The ideological dimensions of colonial allegory
become apparent when the rhetoric of American exceptionalism is
contrasted with a style of allegorical discourse that was used to
deny the existence of a pattern of significant providential corre-
spondences which define the New World as a redeemer nation. The
conflict between John Cotton and Roger Williams which took place
in the 1630s and concerned the coercive behaviour of the Massachu-
setts Bay theocracy, as regards the related issues of 'state worship'
and freedom of conscience, illustrates the cultural purposes served
by the typological allegories constructed by the earliest settlers.
Typology is the discursive mode which has come to characterize
the rhetoric of New World exceptionalism. Typology, the reading
of history as a pattern of promises and fulfilments, assumes a guid-
ing intelligence the transcendent authority of which touches and
empowers the typological interpreter. It is the human decoding of
significant repetitions which places the typological pattern within a
specific historical context: typological signs are the 'parts' which hint
at but do not fully reveal the 'whole' of God's redemptive scheme.
The interpreter must speak what God cannot. In this way, typology
assumes the power to confer a quasi-divine legitimacy upon human
political decisions, since this legitimacy is assumed by the rhetorical
framework within which decisions are made. The power of rhetoric
was exploited by the Massachusetts elite to promote a peculiar view
38
Allegory in Colonial New England 39
of the nature of the colonized New World, a view which depended

crucially upon the role of the clergy within colonial government.
That the ideal church-state never became a political reality only
enhanced the appeal of a rhetorical style which asserted the author-
ity of the clergy to speak both for God and for the community.
Recent work by Harry S. Stout and Ann Kibbey has explored this
coercive aspect of Congregational sermons, centring upon the issue
of how the New World is to be characterized.1 Stout has shown that
typology was used in two quite distinct ways in colonial sermons:
in regular preaching, typology reveals a pattern of prophetic biblical
meanings which are abstract and spiritual in import. It is in public
sermons, presented on occasions such as fast days or election days,
that a more literal, expressly political form of typology expresses
what Stout calls 'the corporate experience of God's "American
Israel"'.
The link between individual and community which, through the
federal covenant (the corporate commitment to an American
Canaan), attempted to bind personal and national ambitions, was
not a necessary part of typology yet this connection became crucial
to the public rhetoric of the Congregational clergy. Ann Kibbey,
discussing John Cotton's deployment of rhetoric, describes the 'ref-
erential imperative' designed to command belief, which is cast at
once in both personal or psychological and in public, political terms.
The sermon which induces conversion actually converts the believer
to the mystical 'language of Canaan' and the preacher, whose social
being is temporarily obscured, appears in this process as more purely
the agent of God's presence.2 Kibbey attributes such transforma-
tions to the rhetorical 'turn' which she describes as characteristic of
Cotton's sermon style. The turn from literal to figurative references
unsettles the listener and creates a semantic ambiguity which can
be exploited by a gifted orator. Clarity of meaning is purchased at
the expense of belief. It is a metaphoric mechanism by which this
'turn' is achieved, in Kibbey's account. Yet in the instances she
gives, the crucial shift is in fact a typologically directed move from
part to whole. With great skill Cotton slots the individual experi-
ences of his audience into a transcendent scheme of national salvation
which gives those experiences direction and significance.
This compounding of personal and cultural identity forms the
basis of Sacvan Bercovitch's own skilful investigations into the
Puritan origins of the American self. In fact, remarkable similarities
can be found between the specific definition of 'America' used by
the Massachusetts Bay theocracy to assert its authority and to estab-

lish its legitimate claim to a political voice and the vision of America
assumed by modern interpretations of colonial rhetoric which claim
'originary' or founding authority for these same Puritans. This pre-
scriptive concept of America lies at the very heart of the influential
work done by Sacvan Bercovitch and, earlier, Perry Miller.3
Following Miller's pioneering work on Puritan thought and cul-
ture, the mythology of the 'errand into the wilderness' and the
creation of an exemplary 'city upon a hill' has provided the basis
for theories of American exceptionalism while the assumption of
exceptionalism has remained. Bercovitch asks why in America the
power of consensus should be so robust, and finds that the myth of
America's typological destiny protects the national consensus, but
he does not ask whether the myth is itself a product of cultural
consensus. The answer to such a question must be a resounding,
No! Even in the early seventeenth century and even among first-
generation migrants the notion of American exceptionalism was
being questioned by a powerful rhetorical style which sought to
describe America rather than to prescribe the spiritual identity of
New England.
The myth of American exceptionalism silences the voices of dis-
sent - including most notably the Separatists Robert Cushman, Roger
Williams and Anne Hutchinson - which have expressed an altern-
ative definition of America: a definition still based upon biblical
authority but resistant to the teleological impulse that motivates
typology. Recent work by Philip Gura on dissenting sects in New
England during the period from 1620 to 1660 points to the for-
mative influence exerted by the dissenting voices which obliged
the orthodox clergy to argue against them. In Congregationalism's
'unyielding effort to neutralize the influence of those who argued
for a more radical [democratic] organization of society', counter-
arguments became indistinct from conservative ideological posi-
tions.4 Against the image of American consensus, promoted by
Miller, Bercovitch and Larzer Ziff, Philip Gura proposes a vision of
early America as rent by ideological divisions. Within this context,
the great achievement of American Puritanism was the channelling
of radical energies into the American national mythology. Even
studies devoted to these marginalized colonial voices turn eventu-
ally to the question of the dominance of the 'New England Way',
ensuring as they do that the image of Congregational hegemony
retains its power. But these repressed and marginalized energies
have never been completely sublimated, despite the remarkable

longevity of the American myth. The ideological manoeuvres that
shaped American cultural history are clearly revealed through the
analysis of those rhetorical styles which enshrine opposed cultural
visions.
Typology was the rhetorical style favoured by the Puritan colo-
nists of New England precisely because of its characteristic linkage
of the personal with the cultural. In an important account of typol-
ogy, A. C. Charity discusses the mode's central concern with locat-
ing an absolute existential norm within the apparent chaos of human
history.5 This 'norm' is a central event to which all other historical
events are causally related. Typology seeks to reveal the pattern of
connection by interpreting the signs of God's participation in human
affairs as He guides events to their preordained place in redemptive
history. At the same time, the normative pressure exerted by the
typological pattern is registered by the interpreter who is confronted
with the critical question: what is the relevance of God's historical
intervention for you? In this way, typology makes demands upon
the personal and cultural allegiances of the individual whose experi-
ences it explains. How one reads should not be unrelated to how
one acts in society. So typology provides a kind of exegetical bind-
ing which relates social action to personal belief. Typology legis-
lates normative practices for the individual, for society, and for
history by determining the shared spiritual essence of diverse ma-
terial phenomena.
The integrative power of typology found application in the im-
age of the Great Migration as a flight, literal and spiritual, from sin
to redemption. The notion of a typological repetition of the Israelites'
escape from Egyptian bondage into the promised land of Canaan
provided legitimation for the colonial enterprise. The typological
parallel appears in historical interpretations of the colonies like those
written by William Bradford, John Winthrop, and the Mathers, which
seek to define an emergent nation. But, as Stephen Fender has ar-
gued so convincingly, typology in these historical writings was used
most frequently to provide a divine justification for migration pre-
cisely at those times when history seemed to be contradicting all
expectations: 'It was in moments of disappointment and frustra-
tion, particularly, when justifications had to be found to satisfy
metropolitan doubts, and the justifications were arrived at, more
often than not, by incorporating the apparent reverses into a larger
providential plan, in which the new world became that "home" for
the spirit which England was not'.6 As a divine justification for

America, typology exerted great rhetorical power.
John Cotton was preaching the typological parallel in a sermon
delivered at Salem in June 1636. The actions of the emigrants are
seen to be divinely guided like those of God's previously chosen
people; but the comparison is made closer by the single, continuous
providential history that these peoples share. As the events recorded
in the Old Testament were foreshadowings of Christ's life, so the
New World history of colonial Puritans was seen to fulfil the prom-
ise shadowed forth by Christ. Events are united by God's redemp-
tive purpose and by the covenant that seals this purpose. The New
England theocracy laid claim to a perfected covenant of grace which
answers and completes the Old Testament covenant of works. Not
all colonists shared this view, of course; I will turn shortly to the
attitude of dissenters like Robert Cushman and Roger Williams. But
the orthodox clergy used the integrative power of typology to extend
their influence into as many areas of cultural life as possible.
Each of the visible churches were joined through the federal coven-
ant and to them was joined the invisible church of the elect, through
the covenant of grace. So the individual was spiritually bound to
the church, to a community-based gathering of the faithful, to a
divinely instituted form of government, and to the providential
history of which the individual soul is part. Cultural, social and
spiritual desires are conflated by the biblical reference of typology:
all three become aspects of a significant repetition of divine events;
all are aspects of the divine will. For seventeenth-century American
Puritans, in Larzer Ziff's words, 'Congregationalism... satisfied and
molded their political and social aspirations as well as their spiritual
longings.'7 Subsequently, the direction of political and social change
was moulded by the perceived shape of spiritual history. The in-
separability of the spiritual and the material worlds proposed by
typology facilitated a relatively smooth process of change. Typology
could provide the means by which new cultural practices were
adapted to, and legitimized by, ancient models. So long as the di-
vinely ordained continuum of history was not ruptured, localized
changes could be interpreted as aspects of the status quo. Within
the context of typology, material change could be at once humanly
guided and divinely authorized.
It is hardly surprising, then, that typology should be the favoured
rhetorical mode of New England's elite nor that typological inter-
pretation should form a part of the theocracy's bid for a share of
political power. The claim to authority of both typology and Con-

gregational theology is based upon the recognition of historical
continuity. In the case of typology this is a continuity between biblical
Testaments and the events they reveal; Congregationalism claims
to identify a continuity between individual and corporate covenants.
Thus, the choice of typology by the Congregational clergy is a self-
serving gesture, one which reinforces the theocracy's claim to power
and prestige. A circular relationship exists between church and
rhetoric: each assumes and asserts the authority of the other.
Let us now extend the discussion of colonial typology and con-
sider the attacks made on typological rhetoric, and the Congrega-
tional ideology that it supported, by Separatists such as Robert
Cushman and Roger Williams. If the Congregational view saw
America as the prime site of contemporary divine activity and
Congregationalists as the privileged witnesses of this divine inter-
vention, what then was the Separatist view of the New World?
Robert Cushman's 'Reasons and considerations touching the law-
fulness of removing out of England into the parts of America' (1621)
is strikingly different in both tone and substance to the typological
experience of migration described by Massachusetts Bay colonists.
Absent is the notion of fulfilling a role prescribed by the Bible;
instead, Cushman argues that all of the promises encoded in the
Old Testament have already been fulfilled by Christ and chronicled
in the New Testament. Any figurative expressions remaining in the
Bible must therefore refer literally to spiritual realities; emphatically
they do not refer to prophesied future events. In response to the
spiritual advances made by humankind, Cushman's argument goes,
God need no longer communicate in enigmatic, symbolic terms:
where 'our fathers' were summoned to God by 'predictions, dreams,
visions, and certain illuminations', now the ordinary examples of
Scripture 'rightly understood and applied' direct the actions of the
present generation.8 Divine rhetoric is no longer mysterious, it is
mystical.
The sacred significance of Scripture, in Cushman's view, has al-
ready been realized - but in heaven, not on earth. Canaan, the land
of rest secured for the Jews, refers literally to the eternal rest await-
ing us in heaven. Cushman is emphatic that in the present time there
is no land so sanctified as was Canaan; there is no land 'given of
God to any nation, as was Canaan, which they and their seed must
dwell in, till God sendeth upon them sword or captivity' (p. 241).
At the present, the faithful Christian has been left to wander in the
wilderness of this earth until Christ should return to transform

earthly reality into a heavenly state. What this heavenly state might
be is recorded precisely in the Gospels. Heaven and earth remain
discrete realms in Cushman's Separatist view.
If the Pilgrims' settlement of Plymouth was not divinely ordained,
it does not follow that the colony was without justification. Cushman
argues that the colonists' reasons for 'removal' are, and necessarily
should be, different from those of the ancient Israelites. It is in
Cushman's own interests to argue so, for in his pamphlet he is
attempting to persuade potential migrants to leave their homes in
England and journey to an uncertain future. Consequently, he is
more concerned to convince his audience that England does not
possess 'typical' status and so will not be the scene of millennial
glory than to promote the image of a new redeemer nation. He is
concerned to discredit the entire linkage between geographical
location and spiritual events. Cushman therefore presents natural,
civil, and religious reasons for migration in place of providential
coercion. The Plymouth settlers can live where they will do good
for themselves and others, where they might use land that would
otherwise lie idle, where they might convert the heathen. 'But, above
all', Cushman exhorts the colonists, 'it shall go well with your souls,
when that God of peace and unity shall come to visit you with
death, [that]... you being found of him, not in murmurings, dis-
content, and jars, but in brotherly love and peace, may be translated
from this wandering wilderness unto that joyful and heavenly
Canaan.'9 Each individual must seek his own salvation in the moral
wilderness of this world until, in the last days, the reality of spir-
itual truths is realized.
Cushman's explicit commitment is to the cause of worldly govern-
ment: his appropriate sphere of interest. This separation of the
material from the spiritual, anathema to Congregationalists, has as
its rhetorical counterpart the use of metaphor. Metaphor assumes
no prior or necessary linkage between the elements it compares;
typology, which assumes a part-for-whole relationship between
elements of analogy, is torn apart by the ontological division which
metaphor simply accepts. In Cushman's view, earthly signs refer to,
but do not participate in, atemporal spiritual states; metaphor may
compare one with the other but it does not thereby integrate them:
each retains its own identity. Cushman takes the same view of
typology: ever since Old Testament types were completed by Christ,
all types are confined to a purely abstract and spiritual sphere of
reference. A similarly metaphoric style of rhetoric marks the writings

of Roger Williams as he directs his attack towards the typological
interpretation of the New World promoted by the Bay colonists.
Turning specifically to the Cotton/Williams debate, we find that
Roger Williams attacked the Congregational vision of a divinely
ordained errand from God which justified the Great Migration.
Williams objected to the argument that the emigrants were com-
pelled to flee from the sin of the Old World and were directed to
a divinely appointed place where the renewal of the church could
be perfected. What he objected to was the interdependence assumed
between materiality and spirituality. He rejected the unsevered
bonds still enduring between the New and Old World churches; he
rejected the notion that an entire people could be covenanted to
God in the same way as an individual; he rejected the idea that the
invisible church of the elect could be identified with a single national
group. In the course of their famous controversy, Williams repeatedly
criticized John Cotton for his narrow attribution of spiritual signifi-
cance to specific national identities:
For that locall and typicall separation from Babylon, Isa.52.1 could
not well have beleeved that Mr. Cotton or any would make that
comming forth of Babel in the antitype, Rev.18.4. to be locall and
materiall also. What civill State, Nation or Countrey in the world,
in the antitype, must now be called Babel? certainly, if any, then
Babel it selfe properly so called: but there we find (as before) a
true Church of Jesus Christ, 1 Pet.5.10
Williams makes appear absurd the typological imperative that

nations possess only one spiritual identity by pointing to the multi-
ple, Babel-like significances that real, literal nations do, in fact, have.
Are all the inhabitants of Britain to be condemned as Babylonian
apostates, he asks, simply because the New England emigrants came
out of Britain?
John Cotton, in response, attacked what he saw to be the antiso-
cial individualism of Williams's views. Congregationalism was able
to rationalize its own antisocial aspects, such as the exclusion of the
unregenerate from civic power, by claiming to act on behalf of the
entire community. The part-for-whole logic of typology enabled
the £lite to legislate for the group. Those of the elect 'called' by God
to positions of power held a sacred duty to protect not only the
property and persons of their subjects but to guard their consciences
as well. This presumption, this usurpation of divine prerogative,

Williams condemned as he denied the right of the civic magistrates
to punish spiritual infringements of the Commandments. His in-
sistence on the clear separation of church from state, religion from
politics, undermined the very mythology to which the colony owed
its ideological existence; not surprisingly, attacks such as his alien-
ated Williams's Congregational brethren.
Williams directed the full force of his Separatist arguments against
the weakest point of the Bay orthodoxy: he attacked the typological
assumptions that lent authority to their cultural practice:
There is a Civil sword, called the Sword of Civill justice; which,

being of a materiall civill nature,... cannot according to its utmost
reach and capacitie (now under Christ, when all Nations are
merely civill, without any such typicall, holy respect upon them,
as was upon Israel, a Nationall Church), I say, cannot extend to
spiritual and Soul-causes, Spiritual and Soul punishment, which
belongs to that Spiritual sword with two edges, the soule-piercing
(in soule-saving or soule-killing), the Word of God.11
Williams uses a metaphoric style of rhetoric to express his sense of

a profound disjunction between the spiritual and the material realms.
The image of the sword of spiritual justice acts as a sign which
presents to our limited human understanding a concept which we
would otherwise be unable to imagine. He resists as far as is pos-
sible in his own writing the conflation of the earthly with the
mystical. The typological concept of a single identity shared by this
world and the next Williams dismissed as an illusion. The sacred
cannot be known by means of any earthly sign and only metaphor
can function, though inadequately, to make religious realities ap-
prehensible. The divine cannot be known fully; in earthly terms,
only analogies which are acknowledged to be partial can approach
the divine.
This epistemological scepticism, when extended to his thinking
on freedom of conscience, led to Williams's most lively assault on
non-Separatist rhetoric. Because fallen humanity cannot with any
degree of certainty know the divine will, every individual must
labour under an individual burden to discover salvation. And
salvation, once found, cannot be fully described in temporal terms.
In "The Bloudy Tenent of Persecution' Williams uses the image of
the Church militant in his struggle to sustain a clear distinction
between secular and sacred values even as he is discussing sacred

realities. Deploying an explicitly metaphoric style of rhetoric he
likens the invisible church of the elect to the soldiers of Christ who
bear spiritual armour and weapons; their victories are the inverse
of those of this world since, when they are slain, the willingness to
die for Christ is their victory, everlasting life; they liberate souls as
they 'carry into captivity the very thoughts of man, subjecting them
to Christ Jesus: they are spiritual conquerors . ..' (p. 363). The tran-
scendent power of Christ is sharply contrasted with the limited
authority of the civil magistracy which acts only for the secular
community. The magistracy receives its power from the human
community; civil authority is definitely not deputed by Christ.
Paramount among all sins, and most likely to cause divine displea-
sure, in Williams's view, is the confusion of these two sources of
power, the civil and the sacred.
The want of discerning this true parallel, between Israel in the

type then, and Israel the antitype now, is that rock whereon
(through the Lord's righteous jealousy, punishing the World and
chastising his people) thousands dash and make woful Shipwrack.
. . . O that it may please the Father of Lights to discover this to all
that fear his name! then would they not sin to save a Kingdom,
nor run into the lamentable breach of civill peace and order in the
world, nor be guilty of forcing thousands to Hypocrisie, in a State
worship, nor of prophaning the holy name of God and Christ, by
putting their Names and Ordinances upon uncleane and unholy
persons: nor of shedding the blood of such Heretics, &. whom
Christ would have enjoyed longer patience and permission until
the Harvest; nor of the blood of the Lord Jesus himselfe, in his
faithfull Witnesses of Truth: nor lastly, of the blood of so many
hundred thousands slaughtered men, women, and children, by
such uncivill and unchristian wars and combustions about the
Christian faith and Religion (pp. 416-17).
This lengthy passage sets out Williams's primary objections to the

typology practised by the Massachusetts Bay clergy. The typological
assertion of identity between private and public values, between
sacred and secular powers, in Williams's terms constitutes the usur-
pation of divine salvation by institutionalized doctrine: 'state wor-
ship'. The integrative power of typology - the source of its value
for Congregational rhetoric - is undercut by Williams's conviction
that religion can bear no direct relevance to secular politics. His

emphatic separation of the categories merged by typology, as
Edmund Morgan in his now-classic study has argued, is motivated
largely by the perception that typology simply pollutes both the
sacred and the secular: civil government suffers through the restric-
tion of the franchise to church members; the elect must suffer the
involvement of hypocrites in their churches; and the image of the
theocracy suffers through instances of false coercion.12
The fallibility of human conscience is seen by Williams as an
argument against typological interpretation and for religious toler-
ation. The orthodoxy assumed the fallibility of the congregation's
consciences and on the basis of this argued the need for enforced
clerical guidance within the community. (Financially, the clergy
required contributions towards maintaining the means of worship
even if the Congregational form of worship was opposed by an
individual's conscience.) Roger Williams refused to grant immunity
from error to clerical consciences, rather he charged ministers with
the same fallibility as their congregations. Still, if the clergy was not
an infallible guide to truth the Bible was. But Williams does not
assume that the Bible will reveal all of its sacred truths to those
holding political office - or even those (church members) for whom
political power was reserved. Williams describes the Bible's action
on individual souls as a gradual and progressive process of enlight-
enment: a process which is independent of enforced religious be-
lief. In fact, by enforcing religion governments contradict the Gospel
accounts of Jesus's toleration and so discount the authority of Scrip-
ture. By persecuting 'heretics' governments betray their secular duty
to protect the property and persons of all their subjects and they
also defeat the professed spiritual aim of advancing God's earthly
kingdom. Imposed worship obscures the only human access to God:
the freely willed reformation of the mind and heart of an individual
who has been persuaded to accept God by the workings of Scrip-
ture. Williams promotes a vision of the direct operation of the Holy
Spirit upon a limited human understanding and rejects absolutely
the idea of an institutionally mediated relationship between God
and the individual soul. Consequently, he also rejects the rhetorical
mode that expresses a mediated relationship between God and the
soul. Instead, he prefers a metaphorical style of rhetoric which
sustains a division between the sacred and the secular even as it
establishes a provisional relationship between them. Through his
attacks on the preferred rhetorical style of the Bay colony Roger
Williams exposed as non-authoritative the mythology of the emer-

gent redeemer nation and, more specifically, he delivered a signifi-
cant blow to the claims to cultural relevance of the Boston clergy.
That Williams's criticism had hit upon a Congregational nerve is
suggested by the ambivalent response of John Cotton. "The Bloudy
Tenent Washed and Made White in the Blood of the Lamb' (1647)
reveals a central contradiction. Promoting now the glory of God, now
the need to preserve the security of the civil state, Cotton assumes
yet remains unwilling to admit that the two purposes are inter-
related, indeed inseparable, when expressed typologically. But it is
precisely the full import of typology that Cotton wishes to obscure.
He defines typology in such a way as to deny Williams's accusation
that the Bay colony set out to repeat literally the historical experi-
ences described in the Old Testament. Instead, Cotton presents a
kind of typology that is informed by millennial assumptions: he
argues for the creation of an earthly New Jerusalem in Massachu-
setts 'not by making Christ a temporal king, but by making tempo-
ral kingdoms nursing fathers to his church'.13 In this way, Cotton
manages to evade the accusation that he and the orthodox clergy
were attempting to force the hand of providence by fulfilling all of
the literal preconditions for the Second Coming set out typologically
in Scripture.
While Cotton does not concede Williams's point that Christ is a
purely abstract and spiritual being, he does emphasize the spiritual
context from which the literal events of the Bible derive their typo-
logical significance. The interdependence of material and spiritual
realms Cotton defends by invoking the image of Christ as a divine
mediator. Significantly, as he does this Cotton implicitly draws a
parallel with the mediating role of the New England clergy. Cotton
does not let pass the opportunity to reassert the clergy's claim to a
greater share of cultural power and prestige. Christ's power is re-
vealed not only in heaven but also in the earthly churches, Cotton
argues, and as a consequence the churches share Christ's transcend-
ent power and authority.
In the days of Christ's flesh it was incompatible to his ministry to

make him a king (as they went about to do, John 6:15). Christ
hath enjoyed (even as mediator) an everlasting kingdom, not only
in the church, but in the government of all the kingdoms of the
earth, by his glorious power and righteousness. But the king-
doms of the earth are then said to be the kingdoms of our Lord,
when they submit their laws to the laws of his word. But that
neither maketh him a temporal king, nor his kingdom in the
church to be a kingdom of this world. The church and common-
wealth are still distinct kingdoms, the one of this world, the other
of heaven, and yet both of them from Christ; unto whom the
father hath committed all judgment (Job 5:22) (p. 204).
The image presented here of heaven and earth as separate yet bound
together by Christ is a reformulation of the classic typological struc-
ture where the part stands for the whole. Like part to whole, civil
law is only one part or representation of the transcendent law of
heaven. Cotton's reformulation differs from classic typology where
he emphasizes the punitive aspect of this relationship. Because the
fate of the civil state and the state of religion are interdependent,
Cotton goes on to argue, religious failures (such as the failure to
destroy heresy) are liable to be punished by calamities visited upon
the whole community.
The paternalistic attitude that Cotton expresses towards the
congregation seems to be based upon this punitive application of
typology. God expresses His concern for His subjects through pro-
videntially administered rewards and punishments; similarly, the
clergy expresses its pastoral concern through correction and punish-
ment. Cotton denies the charge that he, with the rest of the Bay
clergy, persecutes dissenting consciences by redefining the notion
of persecution: he denies the legitimacy of dissenting voices. Per-
sistence in heretical belief, even after instruction in the truth, reveals
to Cotton only obstinacy. A refusal to recant after such instruction
simply cannot represent spiritual or moral integrity in Cotton's terms:
persistence in heresy can only signify a sin against both the individ-
ual and the corporate soul, never respect for the dictates of con-
science. Persecution, if and when it does occur, Cotton concedes, is
punishment for sinning against, rather than because of, conscience.
But conscience, in Cotton's view, is not only a matter for individual
concern: as the entire community was subject to the consequences
of dissent, so the body politic was entitled to both spiritual and civil
means of protection against heresy. The conflation of earthly with
heavenly authority in Cotton's account outraged Williams's convic-
tion that spiritual errors are to be judged and punished by God
alone. As Cotton attempted to extend the influence of the church,
Williams as rigorously denied any such expansion of ecclesiastical
power.
It is in relation to the issue of toleration that their opposed con-

ceptions of rhetoric engage in an explicit confrontation as Cotton
refuses to modify his integrative vision of typology and Williams
steadfastly repeats his condemnation of orthodox typology as illu-
sory and dangerous. In response to Williams's insistence upon the
absolute difference between the spiritual and the earthly, Cotton
invokes (typologically, of course) biblical authority for the insep-
arability of theological and civil government. At the same time, he
attacks Williams's wilful neglect of his own spiritual duties: duties
which God has assigned to him through typology. Interpreting
Deuteronomy 13, Cotton points out that the civil sword was ap-
pointed by the Angel of God, a type of Christ that remains unan-
swered and incomplete in the New Testament. The magistrate
answers the type and stands in a position parallel to that of the
minister of God who is charged with the duty of executing God's
vengeance on evil doers. Only a carnal, 'ungodly imagination' would
confine the responsiblity of magistrates to the bodies and not the
souls of citizens. The entire set of relationships and responsibilities
that regulate social life have been instituted by God and as such are
respected by the faithful, Cotton argues. The social hierarchy is
preserved by the responsibility of parents for their children, of
masters for their servants, captains for their soldiers, the magistracy
and the clergy for their subjects. Church and civil governors are
similarly placed: where the one promotes the health and prosperity
of the soul (and, by extension, material well-being), the other pro-
vides for the health of the body and material estate (and so contri-
butes to spiritual prosperity). The entire chain of authority is bound
by the transcendent authority of God.
The typological rhetoric of Cotton's interpretation defines all
human governors as representatives of the divine will. But this
representative function Cotton extends to all members of the Con-
gregational church. In 'A Sermon Delivered at Salem', in June 1636,
Cotton describes paternalistic responsibility and the administering
of merciful chastisement as duties shared by all church members.
The difference between clergy and congregation, as Cotton explains
it, lies in the superior ability of the clergy to decipher the signifi-
cance of divine judgements but all church members, by virtue of
their typologically defined relationship with God (as constituent
parts of the divine scheme), possess the right to engage in the 'loving
chastisement' of their fellows. This is more than a right: if the soul
truly belongs to Christ, Cotton argues, then it desires an ever closer
relationship with Him and as a consequence the soul is moved

continually to recall and renew the covenant with Christ. The soul
is prompted to admonish and reprove its brethren if they are seen
to be defiled in order to keep the heart and the soul clean.14
Religious intolerance becomes a spiritual imperative for both
individual and community in Cotton's deployment of typological
rhetoric. Individual church members, standing in the same relation-
ship to the divine scheme as civil and ecclesiastical governments,
share their responsibilities and authority. In this way, typology
achieves the internalization of cultural conservatism: each citizen
is charged with a sacred duty to preserve the status quo. Roger
Williams argued strenuously against this conception of earthly
subjects as signs which represent aspects of a transcendent divine
will. In Williams's view, earthly signs can never represent unam-
biguously the divine will; the idea that material signs can be coor-
dinated in such a way as to reveal the whole divine plan of history
is impossible.
Each in his own way, both Cotton and Williams seem to have
been pursuing a Utopian vision of the possibilities opened up by
the New World, but they differ in their conceptions of millennial
change. Williams's expectations waited upon the return of Christ
before any real spiritual change could be realized; Cotton anticip-
ated the realization of the New Jerusalem in historical time, in geo-
graphical space and so in cultural terms.
The extension of clerical authority into the realm of secular govern-
ment formed a necessary part of the millennial vision which Cotton
shared with his ecclesiastical brethren. The rhetoric in which this
vision was cast also provided justification for the whole colonial
venture as an exploration in American exceptionalism. The power
of this typological rhetoric derived in large part from its capacity to
define a particular kind of human subject. As we have seen in the
case of Congregational church members, typology was able to
empower individuals by placing them in a particular relationship
to a transcendent source of authority. The exceptionalism of America
and of Americans is authorized by their shared participation in the
same divine history. And the full significance of this history could
only be known through the typological interpretations provided by
the orthodox clergy.
The mechanism by which typology creates and represents a spe-
cific kind of subjectivity has been described by Harry Stout. He
observes that typology, as it was exploited by Puritan sermons,
encouraged listeners to insert themselves, their experiences, directly

into a world of biblical promise. The same point is expressed rather
differently by Sacvan Bercovitch who describes conversion as a
redefinition of the self as a reflection of the church. Church and
converted soul share a common submission to the same transcend-
ental power. The locus of the conversion process is the conscience
- the site of such debate between Cotton and Williams. Conscience
becomes, in the process of conversion, an index of sacred values
which transforms self-judgement into a reflection of God's (and the
church's) assessment of the self. Conversion transforms the self into
a part of the divine whole, expressing the values of that whole
scheme. Social and spiritual beings are thus conflated by Congre-
gational church practice and this compounding of personal and
community identity was fixed by the concept of national election or
'federal hagiography', as Bercovitch calls it.
The representation of the church-state as an elect individual was
possible only through typology which defined the colonial venture
in terms of salvation. This, of course, provoked the criticism of
Roger Williams who objected to the non-Separatist polemic implicit
in a rhetorical strategy which established the orthodox clergy as the
privileged interpreters of the New World's identity. Thomas Hooker
applies Old Testament types to the anticipated history of New
England in his sermon of 1640, 'The Application of Redemption'.
Hooker uses the scriptural account of the Exodus in order to exhort
his hearers to prepare themselves for the promised 'good land which
aboundeth with prosperity'. The use of the analogy Hooker justifies
as an example of God rewarding his favoured people: '[t]he truth
of this type, the prophet Hosea explains and expresseth at large in
the Lord's dealing with his people in regard of their spiritual con-
dition'.15 The exceptionalism of the Massachusetts Bay colony derives
from the spiritual eminence of its citizens and this eminence is de-
monstrated by obedience or conformity to the will of God as it was
interpreted, typologically, by the clergy.
This convergence of the personal and the cultural in the prin-
ciple of conformity is most clearly defined in the jeremiads preached
by the second generation of colonial ministers. Samuel Danforth,
for instance, in the jeremiad 'A Brief Recognition of New England's
Errand into the Wilderness' (1670) identifies the primary source
of spiritual unbelief as the pursuit of private interest: 'inordinate
worldly cares, predominant lusts, and malignant passions and
distempers stifle and choke the Word and quench our affections
to the kingdom of God'.16 In sermons such as this, social criticism

is cast in terms of spiritual declension: failure to meet the con-
ditions set down for salvation - both personal and corporate - is
seen as a refusal of cultural conformity. Danforth, in the same
jeremiad, goes on to describe how the neglect of hearts, families
and churches in New England is punished by God in the form of
blasting and mildew, severe droughts, tempests, floods and sweep-
ing rain. The physical punishment of material neglect finds a spir-
itual counterpart in the 'famine of the Word', the removal of God's
ministry which, Danforth warns, will follow the neglect of 'the Lord's
house'.
Preservation of the status quo, in the interests of the entire com-
munity, was interpreted by the orthodox clergy as a prime aspect
of the paternalistic responsibility with which God had charged the
governing elect. Typology defined the Bay colonists as the chosen
people of God, privileged to have God intervene in their history;
but as a consequence only the clergy were able to discover cause for
celebration and for despair by deciphering the signs of God's loving
chastisement in material afflictions and uncovering evidence of His
continuing concern in every cultural crisis. It was perhaps inevitable
that these signs were interpreted so as to assure the hegemony of
Congregationalism. For the same divine authority that validated a
specific definition of New World history, of colonial subjectivity, of
rhetoric and its cultural application, also supported a specific theo-
cratical order in colonial New England.
The limitation of the franchise to church members reserved pol-
itical power for those who had experienced saving grace, who were
assumed to be guided by pious values, who had been subjectively
transformed into the image of Christ. As such, the elect were trained
to read Scripture in such a way as to produce a consensual opinion
about the social application of biblical meaning. The spiritual elite
was also a political elite: those eligible to vote were seen to consti-
tute a new saving remnant, dedicated to the spiritual and material
prosperity of the colony. But the convergence of spiritual and social
power worked in an emphatically conservative manner by displac-
ing the desire for political power (proper only to the regenerate,
anyway) into the desire to prove one's sanctification by obeying
the Law. This meant, in effect, submitting to the existent power
structure. Dissident voices were excluded on material, spiritual
and ecclesiastical grounds and this exclusion was cemented by the
dominant rhetorical practice of the orthodoxy.
The most effective challenge to the conservatism of the Bay theo-

cracy culminated, in 1636, in the Antinomian Controversy. Anne
Hutchinson challenged the typological system of mediations which
provided authority for the colonial church-state on much the same
grounds as Roger Williams. Like Williams, Hutchinson centred the
debate upon the legitimacy of compounding the sacred and the
profane. She argued that preachers who urged civil obedience and
submission to the Law were 'legal teachers' who, rather than preach
the spirit, urged only the moral Law and so directed their congre-
gations into hypocrisy. Unlike Williams, Hutchinson takes as the
target for her attack not the style of rhetoric practised by these
preachers but instead she attacks the specific cultural order sup-
ported by that rhetoric.
Hutchinson questions the nature of the community itself, the
theological justification, defined by the clergy, which validates the
'exceptional' identity of the New World. Her conception of a direct
and personal revelation as the only way to know God is radically
opposed to the orthodox vision of a pious, useful life lived within
an orderly society dedicated to God. Hutchinson's rejection of the
church as the mediator between the soul and God is a rejection of
the church's cultural definitions: definitions of what constitutes piety,
usefulness, and social order. With her followers, Hutchinson denied
the authority of the ministry to legislate forms of worship for the
individual and, by undermining this spiritual prerogative, also
denied the clergy's claim to cultural authority. By shifting the locus
of authority from the clergy to the congregation, Hutchinson attacked
the very foundations of Congregational ideology.
As a consequence of this controversy, the locus of power within
the Congregational church was made explicit. Churches no longer
attempted to disguise the fact that real authority was vested only in
the church elders, that the power ascribed to the congregation in ear-
lier theorizing was only nominal. The separation of church officers
from the congregation became ritualized - an explicit expression
of what had already been implicit - in the seating of officers apart
from the congregation. John Cotton provides an unusually explicit
account of the Congregational attitude towards theocratic authority
and of the rhetorical style proper to the expression of that authority
in 'The Keys of the Kingdom of Heaven' (1640). Cotton considers
the difference between the power of excommunication, which be-
longs to the congregation, and the doctrinal powers possessed by
church elders.
The like difference would appear if we had seen a government

tempered of an aristocracy and democracy; in which, suppose the
people have a share, and their actual consent is necessary to all
laws and sentences, whereas a few nobles that are set over them
(whose concernment is less general) in whom the formal sanction
of all should lie, in these it were rule and authority, in that multi-
tude but power and interest; and such an authority is to be given
to a presbytery of elders in a particular congregation, or else (as
we have long since been resolved) all that is said in the New
Testament about their rule, and of the peoples' obedience to them,
is to be looked upon but as metaphors, and to hold no proportion
with any substantial reality of rule and government.17
Here, Cotton proclaims the power of the elite and of typological

rhetoric (as opposed to metaphor) which provides transcendent
justification of a conflated view of the sacred and the profane. Here,
Cotton reveals the true interests served by orthodox typology. Gone
is the rhetoric of exceptionalism; in its place is an explicit recogni-
tion of the clergy's political ambitions which were served by colo-
nial typology. As the Cotton/Williams debate shows so dramatically,
the orthodox typological interpretation of Scripture easily became
the clerical prescription of a particular social hierarchy (rulers and
obedient subjects), simply using scriptural justification to promote
its own social model. The interdependence of spiritual and material
expressions of power, in typology, becomes an important aspect of
that clerical bid for a greater share of political power in which
Cotton was involved. But here Cotton also expresses the irony of
Puritan typology, which was employed initially for radical purposes
- to justify and enable a break with the culture of the Old World -
yet which eventually was transformed into a rhetorical bulwark
against real cultural change.
The dominance of Congregational typology, together with the
myth of American exceptionalism it assumes, has provided the
context for modern discussions of colonial dissidents like Roger
Williams and Anne Hutchinson. Though these dissident voices have
been acknowledged, the manner in which they have been silenced
rarely forms the focus of inquiry. Rather, the fact that such men and
women have been marginalized by the dominant discourse of
exceptionalism is assumed and it is the way in which the orthodoxy
achieved predominance that has interested scholars such as Perry
Miller, Sacvan Bercovitch, Ann Kibbey and Harry Stout, to name
but a few of the most prominent. For these critics, as for the colonial
orthodoxy, typology has provided the means for rewriting history
in such a way that it can assume its 'predestined' shape. But typology
has a more sinister aspect: that of coercion and, for those who refuse
to submit, historical obliteration. What typology cannot explain, it
explains as meaningless. What dissent typology cannot tolerate, it
transforms into a dangerous irrelevance.
The conservative image of colonial America, and the mechanisms
by which the orthodoxy transformed radical energies into a con-
servative ideology of New World exceptionalism, are accepted as
given even in recent accounts of colonial culture. Perhaps this vision
of America as the world's last and best chance is the most powerful
inheritance of the colonial orthodoxy; certainly it appears to be
evidence of the extraordinary longevity of the orthodox Puritan
vision. But that this vision was not the product of consensus becomes
obvious from those voices of dissent which have proved to be as
long-lived as their orthodox opponents.
3
Captivity Narratives:
Mary Rowlandson,
Harriet Jacobs and the
Rhetoric of Exceptionalism
The image of escape from bondage to a land of freedom has pro-
vided a powerful and recurring figure in American literature, both
theological and secular, from the colonial period into the nineteenth
century and even later.1 Richard Slotkin's seminal account of Ameri-
can cultural mythology, Regeneration Through Violence, and Annette
Kolodny's equally important study of colonial American women's
writing, The Land Before Her, both attribute to the captivity narrative
a powerful originary influence upon the shape of later canonical
writings.2 Within the context of Puritan captivity narratives, the
style of typology which was based upon the biblical freeing of the
Israelites from bondage in Egypt offered a means of representing
the ordeal of captivity as a necessary part of God's redemptive
mission in the New World.
Mary Rowlandson's account of her captivity among the Nar-
rangansett Indians, who attacked her frontier town of Lancaster,
Massachusetts, in February 1676, is widely regarded as marking the
beginning of the American captivity genre. The Sovereignty and
Goodness of God (1682) establishes a typological model for an inter-
pretation of the experience of captivity which is consonant with
Puritan ideology and which exemplifies the status of New England
as an infant 'redeemer nation'. Mary Rowlandson is brought to the
gradual awareness of her special destiny as, through the sufferings
and pain and deprivation of Indian captivity, she renounces her
earlier selfish and complacent ways and surrenders herself to the
knowledge of God's absolute power and sovereignty. Her physical
redemption thus comes to mirror her spiritual redemption and her
eventual restoration to the community of visible saints in Boston
prefigures, in her representation, the future destiny of her soul
58
Captivity Narratives 59
among the saints of heaven. Further, Mrs Rowlandson claims for

her experience an exemplary significance as an indication of the
special destiny reserved for God's chosen people of New England.
Mary Rowlandson's liberation from suffering, her rescue from the
moral and geographical wilderness prefigures, in her account, the
future liberation of the community of saints from the bondage of
worldly sin into the freedom of heavenly bliss.
Implicit in the opening account of the attack on Lancaster is the
typological subtext of Mary Rowlandson's story. Despite the sud-
den incursion of death and violence into her domestic world, Mary
cannot surrender her allegiance to the things of this world and
place all her faith in God. This is in contrast to her sister (Elizabeth
White Kerley) who, confronted with this scene of murder, whole-
sale destruction and bloodshed, when told that her son had been
killed and her sister gravely wounded, prays that she too might die.
Her prayer is immediately answered and she falls down, shot dead.
Mary comments that her sister had taken to heart the passage in 2
Corinthians, 'And he said unto me, my grace is sufficient for thee'.3
Mary Rowlandson must learn this lesson for herself and accept
that, for her also, God's grace is sufficient. She admits that before
the raid she had often said she would rather be killed than taken
captive by Indians; but when she is confronted with the choice, she
cooperates with her enemy and chooses the chance of survival over
death. That this choice is guided by God, so that she may be chas-
tised and brought to a full awareness of her dependence upon Him
and His mercy, Mrs Rowlandson suggests when she writes that 'the
Lord by his almighty power preserved a number of us from death',
but only after they had witnessed the devastation of their homes
and families: 'Come, behold the works of the Lord, what desolation
He has made in the earth', she writes (p. 35).
At first, Indians are characterized by their cruelty and brutality.
Mrs Rowlandson follows her graphic description of the attack on
her home with a report of other Indian atrocities. To heighten her
anguish, she suggests, the Indians remind her of the settlers killed
in an Indian raid on Lancaster the summer before; this reminder
serves to underscore her perception of the lack of compassion and
humane feeling among her captors. Not only is she tortured by her
wounds and the suffering of her mortally wounded child but the
Indians take whatever opportunities are presented to humiliate her.
So, when she tumbles over the neck of her horse while descending
a particularly steep hill, 'they like inhuman creatures laughed and
rejoiced to see it' (p. 37). In her account of the second remove, Mary
Rowlandson's description of her ordeal is punctuated with lengthy
exclamations about the power and mercy of God, demonstrated by
His constant renewal of her strength and stamina. When she thinks
she must surrender to despair and give up the struggle to survive,
God preserves her spirit 'that [she] might see more of His power'
(p. 37). Thus, at an early stage in the narrative her ordeal assumes
a double significance as both a physical and a spiritual trial. God
sustains her spirit or will to survive just as he sustains her spiritual
desire for salvation through grace. Mrs Rowlandson's ordeal tests
her commitment to both spiritual and physical redemption.
The experience of captivity thus takes on a complex typological
significance. Mrs Rowlandson's suffering in the wilderness becomes
the 'type' of personal uncertainty regarding the ultimate destiny of
the soul. Her eventual redemption, through the efforts of the mag-
istrates in Boston and the will of God, signifies the final redemption
of the always-already redeemed soul of the visible saint. More than
this, however, Mrs Rowlandson's experience assumes a communal
significance as a typological repetition of the Babylonian captivity
and her eventual release signifies the glorious future destiny of God's
newly-chosen people in the New World. Like Mary Rowlandson,
if the community of the faithful can keep to their faith despite
the vicissitudes of temporal history then, like the redeemed cap-
tive, they too will be released from bondage to the physical into
the freedom of salvation. As Annette Kolodny has noted, Mrs
Rowlandson is not unaware of the communal interpretation invited
by her ordeal and this typological significance motivates her use of
the Judea capta motif.4 It is during the journey to King Philip's en-
campment that Mrs Rowlandson describes how she surrenders her
inability to weep before her captives and there by the side of the
river she gives herself over to weeping. She creates then a parallel
between her experience and the captivity of Israel in Babylon: 'now
I may say [she writes] as Psal. 137:1, "By the rivers of Babylon there
we sat down; yea, we wept when we remembered Zion"' (pp. 46-
7). The victory of the heathen over the settlers of New England
appears to her as a typological repetition of the sufferings of God's
chosen people. Through this typological logic, the narrative offers
its contemporary readers the opportunity to experience, as Kolodny
phrases it, 'their community's spiritual vulnerability through the
biblical type, and then, more dramatically, their own individual
vulnerability through identification with an actual captive woman

who exemplifies the type'.5
Mary Rowlandson develops the typological parallel between her
destiny and that of the Puritan community by creating a pattern of
Biblical reference which serves to generalize the significance of her
experiences. When she first catches sight of the Indian town of
Wenimesset and sees the large number of Indians gathered there
she likens her feelings of dismay to the experience of David: 'I had
fainted, unless I had believed' (Psalms 27:13). She finds some com-
fort in the biblical parallel between the taking of her own children
by Indians and Jacob's loss of his sons (Genesis 42:36). When she is
forbidden to see her daughter in a nearby Indian village, Mrs
Rowlandson prays that God will show her some sign of His good-
will and will give her reason to hope that her trials will end; shortly
after this her son Joseph (whose whereabouts had been unknown to
her) unexpectedly appears. She exclaims that 'indeed quickly the
Lord answered in some measure my poor prayers' (p. 40). The very
next day Mrs Rowlandson acquires a Bible, taken by an Indian in
the raid on Medfield, and there she finds a scriptural passage which
describes both her experience of despair and the hope of ultimate
redemption:
in that melancholy time [she tells us,] it came into my head to
read first the 28 chapter of Deut., which I did, and when I had
read it, my dark heart wrought on this manner, that there was no
mercy for me, that the blessings were gone and the curses come
in their room, and that I had lost my opportunity. But the Lord
helped me still to go on reading till I came to chapter 30, the
seven first verses, where I found there was mercy promised again
if we would return to him by repentance, and, though we were
scattered from one end of the earth to the other, yet the Lord
would gather us together and turn all those curses upon our
enemies (p. 41).
Mrs Rowlandson concludes, 'I do not desire to live to forget this
scripture and what comfort it was to me' (p. 41). This passage en-
capsulates the orthodox interpretation of Puritan experience: that in
return for genuine repentance and a faithful heart, God will show
mercy to his people and redemption will finally be theirs. This
dispensation applies equally to individuals and to the community
of saints. Despite any backsliding that may have occurred among
the visible saints of New England, God remains willing to keep to

the terms of the federal covenant. He will show mercy where there
is true repentance but where there is none His power will be mani-
fest instead through His wrath.
God's power over all aspects of temporal life is made clear to Mrs
Rowlandson. The Indians are represented as Satanic agents through
whom God warns and chastises His people. It is only when she is
prevented from observing the Sabbath that she remembers how
many Sabbaths she misspent or let pass unremarked. This recollec-
tion brings with it the guilty awareness that God could justifiably
cast her from His sight but Mrs Rowlandson is surprised and im-
pressed by the extent of God's mercy that He does not. This guilty
realization is soon recognized as a crucial step in her chastisement
and repentance; only now does Mrs Rowlandson see clearly the
error of her earlier ways and resolve to reform her conduct: 'as
He wounded me with one hand, so He healed me with the other'
(p. 38). God's chastisement is not only justified but also merciful,
she realizes. The physical wounds she has suffered provide the
occasion for a spiritual healing, and Mrs Rowlandson continues to
interpret her trials in this way: as punishment for her sins and
guidance towards God's true way, from which she has strayed. The
death of her child and her ability to deal with her grief reveal the
extent to which God supervises her progress, preserving her reason
and senses so that suicide does not occur to her. In retrospect, she
speculates that before her captivity the idea of using 'wicked and
violent means to end [her] miserable life' (p. 39) would certainly
have appealed to her under such extreme circumstances. But here
the proximity of God in her suffering is enough to preserve her.
Paradoxically, the nearness of death signifies the new life to which
God is leading her. Mrs Rowlandson's acceptance of the fact that
she must leave the body of her dead child in the wilderness where
the Indians have buried it, and the awareness that she simply has
no choice in the matter, symbolize for her a rediscovered knowl-
edge of her dependence upon God. "There I left that child in the
wilderness', she tells us, 'and must commit it and myself also in
this wilderness condition to Him who is above all' (p. 39). The
brutal realization that the Indians have control over her physical
body gives way in her account to the knowledge that God has a
similarly absolute power over her spiritual being. She must, there-
fore, suffer her ordeal passively while attempting to discover how
her own experience fits into God's redemptive plan.
The precise nature of her spiritual trial is made clear only slowly,
through the interpretation and reinterpretation of her own sufferings
and through her witness to the experiences of others. Shortly after
the lengthy passage where Mrs Rowlandson sets out the terms of
the special covenant between God and His chosen people, one of
her fellow captives, Ann Joslin, tells Mary that she intends to escape.
She is warned against this plan not only because she so big with
child that she is only a week from her confinement but also because
the nature of the trial to which they have been subjected requires
submission to God's will and the belief that He will redeem them.
Goodwife Joslin does not heed these warnings; taking her infant
with her she tries to run away. However, she is recaptured and, as
a lesson to the others, she is tortured before she and her child are
killed and their bodies burned. It is reported that she withstood this
ordeal with prayer rather than tears; too late does she learn that she
cannot resist the fate that God has willed for her. This incident
impresses upon Mary Rowlandson the futility of trying to usurp
God's redemptive role.
Gradually, she realizes that she is witness to a battle for the bodies
and souls of the captives, including her own. God preserves them
through the temptations of loss of faith and despair even as He
causes them to be tested for the good of their souls. The Indians, as
the agents of Satan, struggle with the chosen people of God and try
to lead them away from the path of redemption. But the Indians in
Mrs Rowlandson's account are primarily controlled by God as agents
within His typological history. The typological significance of the
heathen, as she calls them, becomes clear to Mrs Rowlandson during
their fifth remove. There, she describes how the Indians threaten
her with physical violence ('they answered me they would break
my face' (p. 44)) when she refuses to work on the Sabbath. She has
learned the error of her earlier ways when she did not observe the
Sabbath and now that she realizes what is at risk in incurring God's
displeasure she will not be intimidated by physical threats. She
remarks upon 'the strange providence of God in preserving the
heathen': despite the difficulties of travelling with the very young
and very old and particularly when carrying all their belongings
with them, still the Indians are able to elude the pursuit of the
English army. The Indians are able to cross the Bacquag (now
Miller's) River by building rafts from material they find by the
river bank. The English army, however, is unable to find a way to
cross the river and, despite the sight of smoke from the Indian
encampment, the army turns back. Mrs Rowlandson accounts for

this as an instance of God's preservation of the Indians so they can
continue to test the faith and spiritual resolve of the captives who
'were not ready for so great a mercy as victory and deliverance'
(p. 44). Many Indians contribute food or the warmth of their fire
and in this way preserve her through the ordeal until her final
redemption. At this stage, however, her victory over the spiritual
torpor which characterized her life before her captivity is not yet
complete. Yet she remains assured, now, that God travels with her.
She quotes Isaiah 43:2 to this effect: 'When thou passeth through
the waters I will be with thee', though at the end of this section of
her narrative Mrs Rowlandson laments that this chastisement was
ever necessary: 'Oh that my people had hearkened to me, and Israel
had walked in my ways, I should soon have subdued their enemies
and turned my hand against their adversaries' (Psalms 81: 13-14).
Here, Mrs Rowlandson speaks less as an individual and more as a
representative of God's chosen elite. At the end of her narrative she
returns to this incident and to the significance of it for the Puritan
community: 'I can but admire the wonderful providence of God in
preserving the heathen for further affliction to our poor country'
(p. 68). She blames the entire conflict between the colonists and the
Indian tribes upon the failure of the New Canaan to keep to its
scriptural, typological, potential and she makes this judgement clear
towards the end of her account where she again quotes from Psalm
81 and then writes: 'But now our perverse and evil carriages in the
sight of the Lord have so offended Him that instead of turning His
hand against them the Lord feeds and nourishes them up to be a
scourge to the whole land' (p. 69).
If the community of saints in New England were true to the
terms of the federal covenant, Mary Rowlandson suggests, then
God would destroy all its enemies among the heathen. As it is, God
must use the Indians to chastise His people and to lead them back
to the way of righteousness. It is in this connection that Mrs
Rowlandson justifies her own text and the public voice it articu-
lates. As Scripture spoke to her at crucial moments in her distress
to comfort her with the true significance of her suffering and with
hope of redemption, so her narrative is intended 'even as the psalmist
says to declare the works of the Lord and His wonderful power in
carrying us along, preserving us in the wilderness while under the
enemy's hand and returning of us in safety again' (p. 46). Mrs
Rowlandson intends her story to draw attention to the merciful
aspect of the chastisement that all of the colonists have experienced

in the varying forms of famine, disease, Indian attack, or the extreme
trauma of captivity. She has had impressed upon her as a result of
her experience the transient nature of the things of this world. As
a result, she seeks in her narrative to communicate this sense of
vanity to her peers and to encourage them to reassess the priorities
in their lives, to look to the spiritual rewards that await them rather
than to the physical and material aspects of everyday life.
The acceptance of God's supreme power and her own depend-
ence upon that power brings to her an awareness of God's mercy
and justice. It is at this point in her ordeal that Mary Rowlandson
encounters the passage (Jeremiah 31:16): 'Refrain thy voice from
weeping and thine eyes from tears, for thy work shall be rewarded,
and they shall come again from the land of the enemy' (p. 43). Once
she has learned how to hear it, the Bible speaks to her of God's
intentions towards her. First she must surrender her own will to
God's and then as a further stage of reformation she must not only
accept but embrace as just God's chastisement of her. So in the
course of her description of the ninth remove, when she is cast into
a black depression by the news that her son is ill and by her con-
sciousness that she is helpless to aid him, Mary takes comfort from
the passage in Psalm 55: 'Cast thy burden upon the Lord, and He
shall sustain thee'(p. 49). But by the end of the eleventh remove
Mary finds that her understanding of the nature of her ordeal is
expressed in the passage from Psalm 119: 'I know, O Lord, that Thy
judgments are right, and that Thou in faithfulness hast afflicted me'
(p. 50). The knowledge that her sufferings are not arbitrary but are
punishment for her past sins and past impiety brings a new and
comforting appreciation of God's loving chastisement of her.
This sense of spiritual comfort is, however, punctuated with
episodes when she feels keenly the possibility that she might lose
the favour so recently gained. So when she is threatened with blind-
ness after a squaw throws hot ashes into her face, Mary is reduced
again to a state of uncertainty concerning her spiritual welfare and
asks, 'upon this and the like occasions I hope it is not too much to
say with Job, "Have pity upon me, have pity upon me, oh, ye my
friends, for the hand of the Lord has touched me"' (p. 52). Mrs
Rowlandson moves from a passive acceptance of God's will to an
awareness of her own sinfulness and the justice of her punishment.
The prime vehicle for this understanding has been the Bible which
so providentially found its way into her hands. But in the next
stage of spiritual self- knowledge the Bible is of no help to her. She

must now acknowledge that God is, ultimately, mysterious to His
creatures. She cannot know the divine will and it is impertinent of
her to attempt to discover that which she cannot understand. The
continual disappointments that Mrs Rowlandson suffers, when she
becomes convinced that God does intend eventually to redeem her,
contribute to her development of this understanding.
At first she hopes to be rescued by the English army, but that
hope is frustrated; then she hopes that the Indians will do as they
said they might and take her to Albany for ransom, but they do not;
then, when her master promises to sell her to her husband she is
obliged to stay with her mistress at the encampment while her
master, the only Indian who is consistently kind to her, leaves in-
stead. Her distress at this series of disappointments leads her first
to her Bible but there she finds no comfort for the comfort she seeks
lies, as finally she discovers, in the awareness recorded in Isaiah
55:8, that '"my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your
ways my ways", saith the Lord' (p. 53). Mrs Rowlandson is brought
to the realization of the fundamental uncertainty that lies at the
heart of her understanding of her spiritual destiny. This uncertainty
destroys for ever the complacency which she describes as character-
istic of her earlier life. And it is in the shadow of this knowledge of
contingency that a new selfhood is born, a self that embraces uncer-
tainty and rejects the easy assurance that arises from spiritual
myopia.
I have seen the extreme vanity of this world. One hour I have
been in health and wealth, wanting nothing, but the next hour in
sickness and wounds and death, having nothing but sorrow and
affliction. Before I knew what affliction meant, I was ready some-
times to wish for it I should sometimes be jealous lest I should
have my portion in this life, and that scripture would come to
mind, Heb. 12:6, 'For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth and
scourgeth every son whom He receiveth'. But now I see the Lord
had His time to scourge and chasten me (p. 75).
She is brought to a heightened self-consciousness which marks the

distance she has travelled from the person she was before her cap-
ture and ordeal. And this new self-awareness empowers her to hope,
as she writes, that 'I can say in some measure, as David did, "It is
good for me that I have been afflicted"' (p. 75).
Mrs Rowlandson's regeneration and restoration are not without

psychological cost to her: she suffers the lingering after-effects of
trauma in the form of sleeplessness and anxiety caused by her con-
stant awareness of the uncertainty of all things and the omnipre-
sence of God's providential power. She has been subject to both
personal and communal admonition. She reminds us of the scrip-
tural warning that there cannot "be evil in the city and the Lord
hath not done it' (p. 58). Through providence God manipulates the
agents of evil for the scourging of his chosen people so that they
might realize the glorious destiny that awaits them. Mrs Rowlandson
is convinced of the operations of this punitive aspect of typology in
her personal history. She asks us, 'Hear ye the rod and who hath
appointed it' (p. 58): she has undergone trial and penance and knows
fully who controls the 'rod' of divine chastisement.
Mrs Rowlandson's experience conforms to what Alden T. Vaughn
and Edward W. Clark, in the introduction to their collection of
colonial captivity narratives, term the 'abasement-salvation theme'.6
The narrative of her captivity and restoration follows a pattern of
degradation and awareness of worthlessness which is gradually
supplanted by a growing sense of new self-worth within God's
covenant of grace. Certainly Mary Rowlandson finds that she is
abased by her life as a captive slave. She is kept in a state of near
starvation and dire want so that in order to survive she must accept
food, clothing and shelter from those she would shun under any
other circumstances. More importantly, from the point of view of
her soul, Mrs Rowlandson discovers that she is capable of commit-
ting the very sins of which she accuses her captors. She complains
that Indians steal her food. During the seventh remove she turns
her back upon two ears of corn that she has found and turns only
to find that one has been stolen; at that time also she obtains a piece
of horse-liver but before she can cook it properly 'they got half of
it away from me so that I was fain to take the rest and eat it as it
was with the blood about my mouth' (p. 45). But she does exactly
the same thing during the time of the nineteenth remove when,
having devoured her own piece of boiled horse's hoof, she takes
from an English child its share and claims divine authority for this
act of theft: T took it [the morsel] of the child and ate it myself and
savory it was to my taste Thus the Lord made that pleasant
refreshing which another time would have been an abomination'
(p. 60). Her overwhelming hunger leads her to eat all manner of
things which during the fifth remove she thinks of as 'filthy trash'
(p. 44) but which, by the time of the ninth remove, were 'savory to
me that one would think was enough to turn the stomach of a brute
creature' (p. 49). By the time of her release she is willing to eat that
which before would have appeared inedible, like the bark of trees.
Through the use of the abasement-salvation structure, and Mrs
Rowlandson's representation of her sufferings as significant for the
entire Puritan community, her narrative makes available hope for
those who are uncertain of their own spiritual destiny. By emphas-
ising the representative nature of her merciful chastisement Mrs
Rowlandson underscores the special destiny of the New England
saints and the divine sanction for their mission in the New World.7
It is the punitive aspect of typological rhetoric that characterizes
Mrs Rowlandson's narrative. And the sins for which she is pun-
ished are sins that apply not only to her personally but are relevant
to her entire community. The particular transgression for which she
is being punished, the sin of her earlier life to which her comment-
ary returns, is her failure to observe the Sabbath. When she is pre-
vented by her captors from observing the Sabbath, Mrs Rowlandson
recalls 'how careless I had been of God's holy time' (p. 38). This
carelessness returns to bother her conscience later in the narrative
when she studies her previous life to discover how she has incurred
God's wrath.
My conscience did not accuse me of unrighteousness toward one
or the other, yet I saw how in my walk with God I had been a
careless creature.... On the Sabbath days I could look upon the
sun and think how people were going to the house of God to
have their souls refreshed and their bodies also, but I was desti-
tute of both and might say as the poor prodigal, 'He would fain
have filled his belly with the husks that the swine did eat, and no
man gave unto him,' Luke 15:16. For I must say with him, 'Father
I have sinned against heaven and in thy sight,' ver. 21 (p. 56).
She is deprived of both spiritual and physical refreshment, as punish-
ment for her earlier complacency. She had placed herself in a spir-
itual desert by failing to keep God's holy day and her physical trial
in the wilderness is a fitting punishment, a punishment that sym-
bolizes the nature of her transgression and points the way for her
repentance. This is a common theme in Puritan captivity narratives.
Hannah Swarton, who was taken captive from the frontier settle-
ment of Casco Bay, Massachusetts, in May 1690, explains the nature
of her ordeal as God's just punishment for her neglect of religion.
The Swarton family had recently moved from the town of Beverly
to the frontier outpost which had as yet no church and, as Mrs
Swarton admits, their removal had been for worldly and not spir-
itual reasons. She therefore concludes that her trial is a fitting punish-
ment: she is taken deep into the howling wilderness where she is
surrounded by heathen and Catholic idolators.8 Mrs Rowlandson is
not alone in interpreting her suffering as the punishment of her
own sinfulness but this sinfulness is common to many in her com-
munity. It is after her release and in the knowledge that she has
been scourged for the sake of her own and her community's salva-
tion that Mary Rowlandson is able to write that there are 'many
scriptures which we do not take notice of or understand till we are
afflicted' (p. 57). The ordeal of her captivity enables her to develop
a deeper and more complete understanding of God's will in relation
to His chosen people. Consequently, the narrative concludes with
Mary Rowlandson's expression of gratitude that she has been chas-
tised and set aright on the path to salvation. And her conclusion
invites also the gratitude of the community of saints. For the typo-
logical significance of her experiences makes clear that God is aware
of their backsliding and her example offers a warning of what God's
wrath might entail if His people forget the glorious destiny that
God intends for them.
Mary Rowlandson's narrative incorporates a commentary upon
her experiences which places them in the context of typological
history. The literal and the spiritual dimensions of her ordeal are
brought together through the agency of divine providence and typo-
logical rhetoric. Mrs Rowlandson's is an orthodox account of her
physical and spiritual chastisement within the mythology of the
New World errand. However, the interpretation of that gap which
separates the literal from the spiritual in allegorical rhetoric offers
an opportunity for both orthodox and dissenting interpreters to
engage with the mythology of the New World and to appropriate
its most powerful form of expression, typology. Mary Rowlandson
and other Puritan women like her - Hannah Swarton and Hannah
Dustan, for instance - who otherwise could not speak publicly found
a voice in the typological rhetoric of the captivity narrative. Granted,
this was a deeply compromised voice: Rowlandson's narrative was
appended to one of her husband's sermons in the first edition and
other returned captives, such as Hannah Swarton, had their stories
appropriated by Cotton Mather, prime representative of the Mas-
sachusetts elite.9
These women's narratives nevertheless show how the American

tradition of subversive allegorical rhetoric has empowered the oth-
erwise silenced or marginalized American to articulate her sense of
exclusion from the exceptional destiny of the New World. And so
too Harriet Jacobs, an oppressed slave woman, is able to find a
voice and a means of resistance by appropriating the allegorical
rhetoric of Anglo-American culture and using it to express her own
rejection of America's myth of national destiny. Jacobs uses typo-
logical rhetoric initially to describe her exclusion from the national
mythology and then to enact a condemnation of the brand of Chris-
tianity which supports slavery and undermines America's claim to
exemplary moral and spiritual status.
The distance between Puritan and slave writings is not so great
as might at first appear. For the literary models available to eman-
cipated blacks who wanted to tell their story were, in large part,
derived from the culture of white America. The structure of Puritan
spiritual autobiography, for instance, is treated by Houston A. Baker,
Jr as one of the few narrative models available to ex-slaves, though
this narrative genre of course needed reinterpretation within the
context of black experience.10 Subsequently, the black autobiography
has come to represent the need to create a liberated self, a necessity
which takes priority over the projection of a self that conforms to
the dictates of orthodox theological tradition (found in autobiogra-
phical writing by white authors, such as Mary Rowlandson). Harriet
Jacobs, in her slave narrative, undertakes to reveal how the reinter-
pretation of narrative form involves the exclusion of black Ameri-
cans from orthodox Christian traditions and, by extension, from the
mythology of the redeemer nation. Jacobs does this by using typo-
logical rhetoric to expose the racialized definition of America as
white America. Mary Rowlandson used typology as a way of articu-
lating both her allegiance to the orthodox culture of New England
and her inclusion in God's redemptive history. Harriet Jacobs uses
typology to articulate her exclusion from America's exceptional
destiny and her allegiance to an alternative vision of America's
potentialities.
Like Mary Rowlandson, Harriet Jacobs feels the need to offer an
explanation for her adoption of a public voice and she sets out not
selfish but altruistic motives for telling her story. Both women claim
in some way to exemplify the peculiar sufferings of their people.
Under the pseudonym 'Linda Brent', Jacobs writes:
I have not written my experiences in order to attract attention to

myself. . . . Neither do I care to excite sympathy for my own
sufferings. But I do earnestly desire to arouse the women of the
North to a realizing sense of the condition of two millions of
women at the South, still in bondage, suffering what I suffered,
and most of them far worse.11
And she concludes with the prayer, 'May the blessing of God rest
on this imperfect effort in behalf of my persecuted people! (p. 2).
This exclamation takes on an extra dimension of meaning when
read in the context of earlier captivity narratives. Jacobs hopes
through her writing to help to free her enslaved people as did Mary
Rowlandson, who wrote to warn her community of their enslave-
ment to sin. But where Mrs Rowlandson is justly chastised (in her
penitent view) as part of God's redemptive plan for America, Linda
Brent is wnjustly chastised by the redeemer nation itself and its
racialized interpretation of national destiny. Where Mrs Rowlandson
is carried into the howling wilderness of the godless interior, Harriet
Jacobs writes her story in order to expose the howling moral wilder-
ness that exists at the very heart of American civilization. Through-
out her narrative, Jacobs uses metaphors of captivity to expose the
moral wilderness within. At the centre of the divinely sanctioned
institutions of Anglo-American culture - the home, church and the
state - she finds savagery and chaos, and yet is told that she is the
savage, she is the unredeemed. Jacobs's narrative exposes the dark-
est and most brutal aspects of southern society, which she likens to
the whited sepulchre of Matthew 23:27, 'full of dead men's bones
and all uncleanness' (p. 36).
The narrative structure of Harriet Jacobs's life also represents the
abasement-salvation theme common to captivity narratives. At first,
she is not made aware that she is a slave: her mistress treats her so
kindly that Linda writes, 'she had been almost like a mother to me',
and goes on to claim that she lived through her childhood 'with a
heart as free from care as that of any free-born white child' (p. 7).
However, upon death of her mistress, Linda is bequeathed to her
mistress's neice. This is Linda's first experience of the injustice of
chattel slavery and this experience marks the beginning of her
awakening to the reality of her enslaved position: her exclusion
from the national mythology which applies only to white Americans.
She complains: 'My mistress had taught me the precepts of God's
Word: "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." "Whatsoever ye

would that men should do unto you, do ye even so unto them." But
I was her slave, and I suppose she did not recognize me as her
neighbor' (p. 8). Linda is not a citizen; she is a chattel to whom the
God of orthodox American Christianity does not speak. She is not
a part of the divine plan nor is she subject to the operations of the
divine providence that guides America's typologically revealed
history. In fact, Linda finds that her owners resent even her father's
attempts to teach his children self-respect, 'by teaching them to feel
that they were human beings. This was blasphemous doctrine for
a slave to teach; presumptuous in him, and dangerous to the masters'
(p. 10).
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl describes Linda's life of abase-
ment under slavery and the events leading to her eventual redemp-
tion. Redemption for Linda Brent means not only escape to the
North but also the redemption of her mind from the darkness of
self-doubt. The salvation of her self-respect involves a growing
awareness of her own humanity and the right she possesses to her
freedom. Linda describes, in terms of this new and dearly-acquired
awareness, her feelings when, in the face of her constant pursuit,
Linda's northern employer offers to buy her freedom.
The more my mind had become enlightened, the more difficult it

was for me to consider myself an article of property; and to pay
money to those who had so grievously oppressed me seemed like
taking from my sufferings the glory of my triumph (p. 199).
Linda finds here, as elsewhere in her narrative, a biblical parallel

for her sufferings in the example of Job. Incidents abounds with
instances where the Bible offers a source of comprehension for
Linda's various ordeals. Often she finds a vocabulary with which to
describe the incidents of her life in the paradigmatic scriptural ac-
counts of apparently causeless suffering.
The biblical paradigm exposes to Linda's understanding an unex-
pected reversal of spiritual roles under slavery. She finds that
the brutality of slavery operates to transform slaveholders into
representatives of the Devil while her fellow slaves most closely
approach the angelic model. This is especially the case in relation to
the devilish practice at the heart of her story: the sexual persecution
and institutionalized abuse of female slaves. At the death-bed of a
slave girl who has just given birth to her master's illegitimate child
stands the girl's mistress who gloats over her agony like an 'incarnate
fiend'; in contrast, it is the innocently suffering slave who is said to
be under God's protection and mercy (p. 13). In the following chapter
Linda speaks of slave women who are 'degraded by the system that
has brutalized [them] since childhood' (p. 16) but elsewhere she
shows how masters and mistresses are not only brutalized but
damned by the slave system. In chapter nine, 'Sketches of Neigh-
boring Slaveholders', she documents the cases of particularly cruel
neighbours who demonstrate through the ill-treatment of their slaves
their own enslavement to Satan. One, Mr Litch, who was said com-
monly to torture and murder his slaves, died screaming in agony of
cholera. 'His last words were, "I am going to hell"' (p. 47). Another,
Mrs Wade, is said never to cease floggings on her plantation, nei-
ther day nor night. An old slavewoman describes how, 'It is hell in
missis's house.... Day and night I prays to die' (p. 48). Yet another
slaveholder 'boasted the name and standing of a Christian, though
Satan never had a truer follower' (p. 49).
Where Linda likens the spiritual condition of her oppressors to
that of the followers of Satan, she finds a parallel to her ordeal
under slavery in the bondage of the Israelites. At the end of a lengthy
description of the brutalizing effect of slavery upon the masters and
slaves alike, she claims 'You may believe what I say; for I write only
that whereof I know. I was twenty-one years in that cage of obscene
birds' (p. 52). Here, she creates a parallel between her own enslave-
ment and the Babylonian captivity: 'And he cried mightily with a
strong voice, saying Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen, and is
become the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit,
and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird' (Revelation 18:2).
The narrative is punctuated with many instances of slaves who
seek an explanatory paradigm. They wonder at the significance of
their suffering and, often, they ask why does God not take them?
For instance, the slave mother who sees in one day all her seven
children taken from her and sold exclaims, 'Gone! All gone! Why
don't God kill me?' (p. 16). For slaves such as this woman, the only
redemption that can be imagined is the release from worldly
tribulation brought by death. So she asks, why must she continue
in her sufferings and she wonders, as did Mary Rowlandson in her
captivity narrative, at what point she will be deemed to have suffered
enough. Typological figures such as enslavement and redemption,
providential scourging and divine chastisement find a horrible real-
ization in the atrocities Linda witnesses or has reported to her. In
particular, the descriptions of brutal floggings and beatings which

also punctuate her narrative give a ghoulish, literal dimension of
meaning to the typological concept of chastisement. Through faith,
fear and ignorance, Linda's grandmother tries to instil in her children
and grandchildren a sense of passive acceptance of suffering as
God's will. Linda writes, 'Most earnestly did she strive to make us
feel that it was the will of God: that He had seen fit to place us
under such circumstances; and though it seemed hard, we ought to
pray for contentment' (p. 17). When her son escapes to the North
but is recaptured and returned to his owner, Linda's grandmother
tries to accept his fate and sufferings with pious resignation; 'with
characteristic piety, she said, "God's will be done"' (p. 21). This
woman who has suffered so much under slavery argues vigorously
against active rebellion and any suggestion of escape.
The conflict between acceptance of oppression and resistance to
it is one of the issues that makes problematical the relationship
between the genre of slave narrative and earlier spiritual autobio-
graphies. William Andrews, in his very lucid account of the earliest
American slave narratives, discusses the relationship between the
slave narrative form and the popular genre of captivity narrative.
Andrews points out how inappropriate was the conversion structure
of Puritan narratives to the experience of ex-slaves. While this con-
version narrative form 'offered a model quest story in which libera-
tion was defined as spiritual enlightenment through which one could
transcend, if not escape, the power of the world', ex-slaves sought
freedom/or not freedom/rom the self in the world, Andrews argues.12
The orthodox captivity narrative extolled the virtues of passive
suffering and endurance throughout a trial of faith that was in-
tended simply to be endured. While this is her grandmother's atti-
tude toward the sufferings of slaves, ultimately it is not shared by
Linda. Harriet Jacobs's genius is to combine elements of the popular
captivity narrative with aspects of the equally popular sentimental
novel (discussed below) and in so doing to bring to the reader's
attention a kind of suffering, in the form of sexual abuse, that
emphatically was not to be endured.
Linda places her own ordeals within the interpretative frame of
merciful chastisement and wonders 'for what wise purpose God
was leading me through such thorny paths and whether still darker
days were in store for me' (p. 20). Unlike Puritan captives such as
Mary Rowlandson, Linda Brent never does reach a conclusion about
the specific sin(s) that are punished by her enslavement. The absence
of causation or individual responsibility is one of the most power-

ful indictments of American racial ideology represented through
the use of typological rhetoric. Linda's resistance of the sexual harass-
ment she experiences at the hands of her master, Dr Flint, she de-
scribes as 'the war of my life' (p. 19). She likens her master to the
devil, a 'hoary-headed miscreant' (p. 34), and the conflict in which
they are engaged as the struggle between vice and virtue, Satan and
Christ, for possession of her soul. The spiritual forces fighting for
her soul are represented within the narrative by the fiendish Dr
Flint and the exemplar of Christian values, Linda's grandmother.
This becomes apparent when Linda describes how her master at-
tempts to corrupt the Christian virtues and the teachings of forbear-
ance and patient suffering instilled by her grandmother. 'He peopled
my young mind with unclean images, such as only a vile monster
could think of (p. 27). Her grandmother stands as the only protec-
tion Linda has from the 'fiends who bear the shape of men' (p. 27).
Linda blames her inability to accept meekly her lot as a slave
upon the continual harassment she receives from her master. She
connects her rebelliousness with the sexual abuse she suffers when
her hopes of marriage are disappointed. As a consequence of his
jealousy and anger at her continued resistance, Dr Flint forbids that
Linda should marry the man of her choice, a free black man.
When separations come by the hand of death, the pious soul can
bow in resignation, and say, 'Not my will, but thirie be done, O
Lord!' But when the ruthless hand of man strikes the blow, re-
gardless of the misery he causes, it is hard to be submissive,
she writes (p. 37). The awareness of her powerlessness before her
master and of her inability to control her own fate being, as she
says, 'entirely unprotected by law or custom' (p. 55), Linda despairs.
She feels abandoned by God and man; as she tries to explain: 'I was
struggling alone in the powerful grasp of the demon Slavery; and
the monster proved too strong for me. I felt as if I was forsaken by
God and man; as if all my efforts must be frustrated; and I became
reckless in my despair'(p. 54). Rather than surrender passively to
the destiny inscribed for her by slavery, Linda acts. She chooses to
give herself voluntarily to Mr Sands rather than have her virtue
taken by her master. As Linda struggles to make clear to an audience
she assumes must disapprove of her action, this is the only way
open to her to possess her own body and take responsibility for her
own fate. Thus, Linda refuses to be a passive victim and becomes
instead an active agent in her own life.
It is here that Harriet Jacobs's account of her captivity departs
most radically from earlier accounts such as Mary Rowlandson's.
Mrs Rowlandson does suffer her ordeal passively and finds that the
turning-point in her trial occurs once she has realized the full extent
of her dependence upon God and when she has become fully aware
of her own sinfulness. The turning-point in Harriet Jacobs's life
coincides with this decision to take responsibility for her own future
and to shape her own destiny. This decision marks the end of the
abasement theme and the beginning of a tentative movement to-
wards salvation. By rejecting the conventional valorization of pas-
sivity in the face of suffering, Linda exposes the rhetoric of national
salvation as an artificial and racialized construction.
The typological basis of American national mythology is also
undercut by Linda's emphasis upon the prejudicial interpretation
of Scripture by the southern Church. She tells us that after Nat
Turner's rebellion, the slaveowners decide 'to give the slaves enough
of religious instruction to keep them from murdering their masters'
(p. 68). In the chapter entitled "The Church and Slavery', Linda
gives examples of the hypocrisy of the orthodox application of
Scripture when it is applied to the lives of slaves whose ordeals are
created by members of the church, not by God. The despair of a
slave woman whose last remaining child has only recently been
taken from her and sold provides the opportunity for the Methodist
class leader (who is also the town constable) to advise 'with assumed
gravity,... "Sister, pray to the Lord that every dispensation of his
divine will may be sanctified to the good of your poor needy soul!"'
(p. 69), though he can hardly suppress his laughter. Linda exposes
the hollowness of the concept of biblical sanction and the ideolog-
ical operations that underpin biblical authority when she tells us
that the Reverend Mr Pike chooses as the text of his sermon for the
slaves the passage from Ephesians (6:5): 'Servants, be obedient to
them that are your masters according to the flesh, with fear and
trembling, in singleness of your heart, as unto Christ' (p. 68). He
chooses this passage for the chance it affords him to expound upon
the rebellious and sinful nature of his listeners who are justly chas-
tised for their transgressions. In view of Linda's exposure of the
evil practices and malign nature of the white Christians in her com-
munity it is hardly ironic that the hymn the slaves sing describes
how: 'Ole Satan's church is here below. / Up to God's free church

I hope to go' (p. 71). In her representation of them, slaves do not fit
the biblical types proposed for them by their white persecutors, but
Linda does find that her suffering repeats in essence the enslavement
of God's chosen people in the wilderness. She is enslaved and left
to wander a moral wilderness without a reliable guide beyond her
own fitful determination to live as humanly as possible.
After discrediting the use of biblical authority within mainstream
American culture, Linda suggests that still God may assist her
unlawful escape from slavery. With this possibility of divine assist-
ance in mind, she begins to plan an escape for herself and her
children. In an important scene, Linda visits the burying-ground of
the slaves. There, she seeks the blessing of her dead parents upon
her resolution to escape slavery or perish in the attempt. In this
setting she recalls: 'There the wicked cease from troubling and there
the weary be at rest. There the prisoners rest together; they hear
not the voice of the oppressor; the servant is free from his master'
(p. 90). Freedom or death - so Linda interprets this scriptural passage
from Job and also the revolutionary motto, 'Give me liberty, or give
me death', which she quotes soon after (p. 99). The biblical passage
is given a subversive reading by Linda in contrast to her grand-
mother who cites the same passage to recommend patient suffering
until 'we shall go "where the wicked cease from troubling, and the
weary are at rest"' (p. 131). Linda now prays for God's assistance
and guidance and finds her prayers answered in the form of the
white benefactress who conceals her after she has run away. This
woman remains anonymous, but she is identified by the narrative
as a special Providence from God.
Her escape turns out to be so imperfect and the conditions of her
concealment, in the 'loophole', as she calls it, or roof-space of her
grandmother's house, are so physically painful that Linda again
wonders at the logic of her punishment.
I tried to be thankful for my little cell, dismal as it was, and even

to love it, as part of the price I had paid for the redemption of my
children. Sometimes I thought God was a compassionate Father,
who would forgive my sins for the sake of my sufferings. At
other times, it seemed to me there was no justice or mercy in the
divine government. I asked why the curse of slavery was permit-
ted to exist, and why I had been so persecuted and wronged
from youth upward. These things took the shape of mystery,
which is to this day not so clear to my soul as I trust it will be

hereafter (p. 123).
Without knowing what is or has been her sin, she prays that God
will work providentially in her favour: to restore her to her children
and to enable her to be 'a useful woman and a good mother' (p. 133).
God's assistance of Linda's escape is one example of divine Pro-
vidence operating to help those who would escape slavery: the
escape of Linda's brother to the North is also interpreted as the
work of the divine will. In this way, Harriet Jacobs shows how
the providential structure of divine history works not to further but
to subvert the proclaimed national destiny of America. Providence
aids those marginalized and silenced by mainstream American
culture. Yet the operations of Providence are articulated by a typo-
logical style of rhetoric. Linda hopes that God will lead her out of
the darkness of her 'cell' and, in time, she finds that 'Providence
opened an unexpected way for me to escape' (p. 150). Again, her
grandmother is represented as a quasi-divine agent, inspiring faith
in the benevolence of God. Linda recalls praying with her grand-
mother on the eve of her escape; she writes: 'On no other occasion
has it ever been my lot to listen to so fervent a supplication for
mercy and protection. It thrilled my heart, and inspired me with
trust in God' (p. 155).
Trust in God becomes a meaningful experience after Linda has
learned to distinguish the God of the slaveholders from the God
who assists her flight. Once she has acknowledged that the mythol-
ogy of American exceptionalism and the God who directs it pose
the most serious threat to her autonomy and her freedom, Linda is
able to take control of her own destiny. Then she chooses to trust
in God and is rewarded. This distinction between the typological
model that oppresses and the biblical parallel that illuminates and
inspires is repeated throughout the rest of the narrative. Even in the
final chapter, at the end, when her freedom is in sight and yet she
is still pursued by members of the Flint family who would return
her to slavery, Linda emphasizes the extent to which mainstream
American culture departs from the biblical paradigm that supplies
the national mythology.
There I sat, in that great city, guiltless of crime, yet not daring to
worship God in any of the churches. I heard the bells ringing for
afternoon service, and, with contemptuous sarcasm, I said, 'Will
the preachers take for their text, "Proclaim liberty to the captive,
and the opening of prison doors to them that are bound"? or will
they preach from the text, "Do unto others as ye would they
should do unto you"?' Oppressed Poles and Hungarians could
find safe refuge in that city... but there I sat, an oppressed
American, not daring to show my face (p. 198).
Here, as throughout her narrative, Harriet Jacobs uses the biblical

rhetoric of American nationalism to subvert the claim to a divinely
legislated exceptionalism. Jacobs plays off against each other those
characteristics of the captivity narrative and the sentimental novel
which are inappropriate to her situation. Jacobs's use of aspects of
the sentimental style has been criticized by many commentators;
this has become, in fact, a commonplace in analyses of Incidents in
the Life of a Slave Girl. But what these commentators do not see is
that by exposing the terms of her exclusion from the definitions of
'feminine' and 'American' encoded in these narrative forms, Harriet
Jacobs marks the distance which separates her from the condition
of white women in mainstream American society while at the same
time registering her own critique of America's claim to exceptional
moral and spiritual status. The radical subtext of Jacobs's narrative
is to be found in the silences and disjunctions which mark the dis-
tance that separates black from white Americans.
Annette Niemtzow, in an influential essay published in 1982, was
the first to criticize Jacobs's incorporation of aspects of the domestic
or sentimental novel on the grounds that this form, which supports
the ideology of 'true womanhood', deprives the narrator of an
authentic voice by imposing a conventional persona in place of a
newly discovered, liberated, self.13 Mary Helen Washington, in her
collection of black women's narratives, Invented Lives, follows
Niemtzow and argues that the form used by Jacobs 'mocked her
historical condition' but, despite this, the passive stance inscribed
by the structure of the domestic novel is finally transformed by her
narrative into a source of power and autonomy.14 In Washington's
account, Jacobs transcends the limitations of her chosen form by
appropriating it to her needs and by making this popular form
acknowledge the presence and particular sufferings of female slaves.
By depicting herself as an active moral agent who is capable of
shaping and interpreting the significance of her life, Jacobs turns a
story of victimization into one of resistance and eventual triumph.
In this way, Incidents takes its place alongside other slave narratives
which claim control of both the personal voice and a sense of self
'in order to challenge the system that was meant to destroy them',
as Washington argues and quite rightly, in my opinion. The view
that Jacobs's narrative transcends the limitations of the forms it
uses is shared by Valerie Smith who points out that the choice of
formal narrative constraints, like the physical constraints imposed
by the garret in which Brent spends seven years hiding, represents
an exercise of will, a choice that gives priority to self-expression
over submission.15 Linda Brent chooses a garret over the slave plan-
tation and Harriet Jacobs chooses the conventional narrative forms
available to her over silence. As Smith puts it, 'she inscribes a subver-
sive plot of empowerment beneath the more orthodox, public plot
of weakness and vulnerability'.16 Triumph over externally imposed
constraints is made possible by Brent's exploitation of 'loopholes' -
gaps between the model and her actual life - which display the
inadequacy of the sentimental form to describe her life as a woman
and the inability of the myth of American exceptionalism to take
account of the lives of every person living in America. Elements
of the captivity narrative and the sentimental novel are brought
together within the context of typological rhetoric in order to de-
scribe the details of Jacobs's captivity and restoration: her captivity
within the institution of slavery and her eventual restoration to her
authentic self.
While the popular forms of the domestic novel and captivity
narrative doubtless imposed limitations on the telling of Jacobs's
story, nonetheless these models did enable her to tell her story. To
choose communication always entails a sacrifice of pure self-
expression to the limitations of a shared public language; this is
especially the case with slave narratives where subjectivity enters
a compromise with the demands of abolitionist and other forms of
political polemic. The importance of the idea of communication in
Incidents is discussed by Houston A. Baker, Jr in Blues, Ideology and
Afro-American Literature, where he analyzes the juxtaposition of the
domestic with the economic in Jacobs's narrative and concludes
that the use of the sentimental paradigm enables Jacobs to open up
communication with a whole community of women.17 But what
Houston Baker does not say is that Jacobs's use of the American
tradition of subversive allegorical rhetoric enables her, further, to
establish communication with an even wider community as she
articulates her sense of exclusion from the exceptional destiny of
the New World. Harriet Jacobs, as a slave woman oppressed because
of her gender and her race, is able to find a voice and a means of
resistance by appropriating the allegorical rhetoric of Anglo-American
culture and using it to express her own rejection of America's myth
of national destiny. Jacobs uses typological rhetoric first to describe
her exclusion from the racialized national mythology and then to
subvert the providentially inscribed destiny of America, the self-
professed redeemer nation, through its own rhetoric of enslavement
and redemption.
4
Allegory and American
Romanticism
Symbolism has come to represent the rhetorical opposite of allegory
in much twentieth-century criticism of allegory.1 Where allegory
simply points to a referent which stands outside itself, symbolism is
able to embody or to make incarnate abstract realities. The denigra-
tion of allegory that is a part of this view reflects the origin of the
allegory/symbolism debate in descriptions of nineteenth-century
scriptural exegesis. One of the most prominent commentators on
the state of biblical scholarship early last century was Samuel Taylor
Coleridge and his comments have left a legacy of mystical specu-
lation about the rhetorical status of symbolism in comparison to
allegory.
A contrast between allegory and symbolism provided Coleridge
with the vocabulary in which to describe the contemporary percep-
tion of the Bible as pointing to various moral and spiritual abstrac-
tions but not as embodying living truths. Where, under typology,
the Bible incorporated both historical and inspired realities it is
now seen to perform the functions of a guidebook; faith has given
way to 'mechanical understanding' and 'in the blindness of self-
complacency confounds SYMBOLS with ALLEGORIES'.2 Thus
Coleridge accuses his contemporaries of debasing the mystical po-
tentialities of the Bible by reading the sacred text 'allegorically'. It
is not the biblical text itself that allegory describes but the reading
practices of Coleridge's peers. A true reading of the sacred text
would, then, take the form of a symbolic interpretation which would
restore to the text its mystical power by recognizing its images as
symbols which are 'characterized by a translucence of the Eternal
through and in the Temporal'.3 A symbol, Coleridge continues,
'always partakes of the Reality which it renders intelligible; and
while it enunciates the whole, abides itself as a living part of that
Unity, of which it is the representative'.4 Allegory alienates the bib-
lical image from the context of lived experience but symbolism re-
instates the sacramental and redemptive dimensions of the Bible
82
Allegory and American Romanticism 83
which is then seen as an extension of divine reality into the temporal

world.
Though Coleridge had sought to recuperate the mystical power
of the Bible as a preeminent sacred text, his theory of symbolism
had the effect of locating the sacramental dimension of the biblical
text in the perception of the reader or interpreter. This investment
in the subjective experience of the reader explains the attraction
held by symbolism for a generation of Romantic writers, but it also
explains the rise of indeterminacy and ambiguity in allegorical nar-
ratives written in the wake of Romanticism. Coleridge's emphasis
upon subjectivity in the functioning of rhetoric was repeated, in
essence, in America by Ralph Waldo Emerson. Emerson shared
Coleridge's allegiance to a form of rhetoric capable of representing
a 'living Unity' in the world and this provides the motivation for
Emerson's theory of correspondences. 'We live in succession, in
divisions, in parts, in particles', Emerson writes in the essay "The
Over-Soul'. 'Meantime within man is the soul of the whole; the
wise silence; the universal beauty, to which every part and particle
is equally related; the eternal ONE.'5 It is the individual soul that
facilitates this unification which is itself a revelation of some mystical
truth.
Here, Emerson draws out the implication of Coleridge's thought
and explains that not everyone possesses the capacity to perceive
the Bible symbolically - as the privileged sacred text - and equally
temporal history and corporeal nature where inscribed mystical signs
of divine correspondences are to be found. Such a capacity is the
mark of genius and such a genius as this Emerson names the poet.
The poet is the inspired individual who sees imbued in the cor-
poreal world the operations of a world of spirit; it is the poet who
is privileged to receive the dictation communicated by the 'universal
mind'. Where Coleridge had described the Bible as written in a
symbolic vocabulary, it is Emerson's poet who is exceptionally cap-
able of reading the symbolic language of nature. What distinguishes
the poet from ordinary mortals is this symbolic perception which is
atrophied in the perception of ordinary people. 'We are symbols,
and inhabit symbols', Emerson argues in "The Poet', '[but] being
infatuated with the economical uses of things, we do not know that
they are thoughts'.6 The thoughts that issue from the divine mind
are identified as such by the poet while, for the rest of us, they just
pass us by.
In Emerson's view, the poet is able to restore to us and our
experience of the world a plenitude of meaning. The sacramental

function of the Bible is superseded, in the culture of Romanticism,
by the symbolic insight of the poet. The symbolic language of nature
made available to us by the poet supplants the Bible as an effective
source of revelation. Both nature and the Bible participate equally
in a universal system of correspondences and together they mani-
fest the divine intelligence which directs the course of human his-
tory even while it remains apart from temporal reality. And it is the
poet who has access to this realm of sacred intelligence through his
habit of symbolic reading. By proposing that the divine inheres in
and is accessible through the human realm by means of a human
mediator or exegete, Emerson undermines radically the autonomy
and transcendent authority of God. Emerson suggests that the divine
is dependent upon the temporal for its dissemination and with this
suggestion he destroys the authority of any transcendent reality to
provide an authoritative interpretation of human history and cor-
poreal nature.
The primary tenets of Romanticism are to be found propounded
quite clearly in Emerson's work: the tutelary benevolence of nature,
the sanctity and autonomy of the individual, the preference for
intuition over reason and insight over logic, all inform his thinking
about rhetoric. The primary consequences for allegory of Emerson's
influential Romantic theories were, first, that allegorical interpre-
tation was separated from the predominantly biblical context of
Puritan rhetoric and, secondly, that Emerson's emphasis upon sub-
jectivism in interpretation meant that conventional styles of rhetoric
such as typology could no longer operate to close or to complete
the narrative in a satisfactory way. Conventional typology depends
upon a system of correspondences that are controlled by an abso-
lute divine intelligence, objectively conceived. The revelation of
the operations of this intelligence in terms of a 'correct' reading is
essential to the resolution of typological narratives such as the
Puritan captivity narratives discussed earlier. Allegory in the period
since Romanticism has had to come to terms with the absence of an
effective 'transcendental signified' that would ground the play of
narrative signs in an authoritative semantic pattern. Indeed, the
focus of allegorical narratives has shifted in the wake of Romant-
icism from the revelation of a sacred unity to the disclosure of an
irresolvable aporia at the heart of the hermeneutic endeavour.
Among the most prominent of allegorists during this Romantic
period in America are Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville,
who write in an allegorical style that takes up many of the claims

made by Emerson. Their narratives seek a single meaning in history,
nature and anterior texts, but remain sceptical about reconciling a
multiplicity of subjective interpretations. As I mentioned in the first
chapter, allegorical narratives of the Romantic period and after are
increasingly ambiguous about the extent to which the interpretative
issues explored in the narrative can be displaced into the context
of some authoritative anterior sacred text and in this respect they
are most distinct from allegories of the pre-Romantic period. The
Emersonian poet is seen, indeed, as a rather dangerous character
who acts in relation to those who lack symbolic insight as the
Puritan elect act in relation to the non-elect or unredeemed. The
poet is allowed a prescriptive authority in Emerson's thinking which
assumes that the privileged individual is always benevolent and is
always motivated by the desire for truth; Emerson does not allow
for the reality of spiritual evil. Hawthorne, in The Scarlet Letter, and
Melville, in Moby Dick, both address this 'blind spot' in Emerson's
thought. They question the consequences of the kind of spiritual
dictatorship that Emerson proposes by investigating the implica-
tions of this 'sovereignty of the subjective'.
Even more so than Hawthorne, it was Melville who recognized
that the more a transcendent authority is disseminated into the
things of corporeal nature, the greater the loss of transcendent
authority. Completely subjective truth is accompanied by the com-
plete absence of objective truth. The ascendance of Emerson's poet
means the withdrawal of the God of orthodox Christianity and this,
in turn, means the unavailability of any ultimate interpretative
authority. Meaning as perception and meaning as projection are
indistinguishable when the human is the highest hermeneutic au-
thority available. The legislative function of the divine cannot be
performed by even the most privileged human interpreter because
the consensus of belief that is faith and which establishes the objec-
tive spiritual superiority of God cannot be transferred to a private
individual.
The hermeneutic crisis precipitated by Emerson's subjectivization
of interpretation motivates the allegorical rhetoric of Moby Dick. For
while the logic proposed by Emerson for symbolism should prescribe
access to a realm of mystical meaning, in fact the withdrawal of a
transcendent dimension of meaning has caused the displacement
of any 'final' meaning, and has triggered the process of semantic
deferral which is characteristic of allegory. Moby Dick attempts to
discover some objectively verifiable system of interpretation which

would lead to a reliable and authentic set of meanings, grounded
in a transcendent authority. In this way the narrative seeks the
meaning of the white whale. Nearly all of the characters encoun-
tered by Ishmael are engaged in the pursuit of a set of meanings
that lie outside their own perceptual perameters. They are trying
not to do what Father Mapple does in his sermons, for instance,
which is to translate every detail of Scripture into a seafaring meta-
phor: he makes of the sacred text an exclusive projection of his own
subjective experience.
Ishmael discovers, however, that every word, every sign, generates
a plenitude of meanings which cannot necessarily be reconciled.
His attempt to reach a complete definition of cetology is defeated
by the continual proliferation of details which produce a seemingly
endless complexity. While Ishmael is able to describe quite exhaus-
tively the commercial value of whales and of whaling, the meta-
physical value of Moby Dick remains enigmatic. Ishmael's 'cetology'
encompasses a taxonomy of whale species, a close description of
the whale hunt and the extraction of oil, a history of the whaling
industry, an investigation into the mysteries of whaling (like the
apparition of the 'spirit-spout', for instance), and a critique of repre-
sentations of the whale. The chapter 'The Affadavit' offers to establish
the historical veracity of stories about such whales as Moby Dick
but his own legalistic proof inadvertently presents all facts as requir-
ing interpretation, since the validation of Ishmael's own testimony
appeals to others whose experience approximates his own. Ishmael
cannot separate in a meaningful way the objective and the subjec-
tive. Rather than reveal, eventually, a single source of meaning, the
details of Ishmael's cetology, which invariably return the narrative
to the subjective determination of truth, threaten to overwhelm the
interpreter with a vision of nothingness at the centre of the signify-
ing web.
The possibility of an ultimate absence at the heart of things, and
fear of its discovery, is what compels Ahab in his obsessive search
for the white whale. Loss, absence, nothingness: these are Ahab's
motivations. The loss of his leg he interprets as the workings of a
malevolent metaphysical intelligence operating behind the 'paste-
board masks' of the visible world. Barring his access to this malevo-
lent intelligence is the set of cognitive constraints imposed by his
own subjectivity. This is quite the opposite to Emerson's scenario
of a benevolent pseudo-Providence that is available through the
privileged subjectivity of the human poet. Ahab's monomania, his

commitment to solving the enigma of the whale by discovering
what it is that unites subject and object and overcomes the obstacle
of subjective cognition, elevates him to the status occupied by
Emerson's privileged interpreter. Ahab wants to discover by what
agency he lost his leg, a loss he interprets as symptomatic of a
divine displeasure directed at him personally. But more than this,
in his supreme monomania Ahab seeks to supplant a metaphysical
malevolence with his own private hatred.
In Ishmael's view, this hatred is directed against all the evils
which are 'visibly personified and made practically assailable in
Moby Dick'. Ahab, he speculates, 'piled upon the whale's white
hump the sum of all the general rage and hate felt by his entire race
from Adam down'.7 The whale as a sign of unredeemed nature, of
a world which refuses to yield the divine secrets it seems to prom-
ise, attracts Ahab's metaphysical rage. The alien 'otherness' of the
whale which Ahab finds so infuriating Ishmael finds paradoxical,
suggesting both a plenitude and an absence of significance. For the
white of the whale which Ishmael thinks appeals so powerfully
to the soul that it might be 'the very veil of the Christian's Deity'
(p. 235), also represents the indefiniteness of the world, its voids
and absences. The colour which is all colours is also no colour at all
but 'the visible absence of color' which makes apparent 'a dumb
blankness, full of meaning' (p. 236). The promise of meaning is
visible only at a distance yet access to that meaning would seem to
require the loss of self within an all-encompassing metaphysical
totality. Paradoxically, it is alienation that promises meaning; the
unification of self and other threatens nothingness. And it is within
the complexities of this contradiction that Ahab finds himself caught.
Though Ahab's pride leads him to believe that he is capable of
determining the significance of the white whale, he is, finally, obliged
to admit the partiality of his perceptions and interpretations. Un-
able to decide whether the coffin / lifebuoy be an image of 'grim
death' or an 'immortality preserver', Ahab expresses his inability to
conceive of a spiritual meaning in the place of an existential lack.
'So far gone am I in the dark side of the earth', he laments, 'that its
other side, the theoretic bright one, seems but an uncertain twilight
to me' (p. 621). The vision of a metaphysical nothingness which
determines all of his perceptions supports the perverted typology
to which Ahab, in his madness, clings. The typological image of
himself as 'Adam, staggering beneath the piled centuries since
Paradise' (p. 637), in a ceaseless attempt to return to a pristine

comprehension of reality, provides sanction for the Pequod's entire
quest. Ahab seeks to redeem all the sins of the world since the Fall
by battling himself with the metaphysical evil he finds personified
in the whale. Ahab would repeat Christ's struggle with Satan in the
wilderness and thus transform himself from a 'type' of unredeemed
humanity into a figure of divine authority. But Ahab is unable to
identify any solid figurative ground upon which to stage this typo-
logical struggle. The narrative tropes shift uncertainly as they re-
spond to a series of subjective interpretations that resist the final
closure that would accompany the discovery of an objective truth.
An example of this narrative technique is found, in small, in the
'Doubloon' chapter. Here, the narrative proceeds from one interpre-
tation of the significance of the coin to the next. Though multiple
significances are proposed, Ahab represents the extreme of subjec-
tive interpretation as he reads the coin.
The firm tower, that is Ahab; the volcano, that is Ahab; the cour-
ageous, the undaunted, and victorious fowl, that, too, is Ahab; all
are Ahab; and this round gold is but the image of the rounder
globe, which, like a magician's glass, to each and every man in
turn but mirrors back his own mysterious self (p. 512).
The interpreting subject becomes the meaning of its own interpre-

tation. Though they are equivalent, in terms of their authority to
speak for an objective truth, the interpretations represented by the
narrative resist assimilation into a single unified truth.
In the same manner as Melville, Hawthorne tends in his allegor-
ical narratives to place in close juxtaposition many individual inter-
pretations in order to undermine the practical validity of subjective
approaches to objective truth. This is certainly the case in The Scarlet
Letter where the significance of the badge that Hester is condemned
to wear refuses to remain static. In Reverend Wilson's sermon, the
scarlet letter assumes infernal hues, and yet to a 'papist' the sight
of Hester and her child is reminiscent of the Madonna. The nar-
rative creates a figurative link between the scarlet letter and the
wild rosebush that grows at the prison door but the narrator stead-
fastly refuses to create of either, or the narrative itself, 'some sweet
moral blossom'.8 The role of moral arbiter is taken up by the Puritan
women, whose responses to Hester's release from prison are re-
corded in the following chapter. These moralizations are sharply
juxtaposed and represent no consensus of opinion. Rather, they

represent the variety of self-interests and egotistical foibles to which
flesh is heir and which motivate purely personal and subjective
interpretations of human behaviour: motivations like envy, jealousy,
cruelty, spite, and so on.
The narrative posits, in place of a continuity of meaning, a multi-
plicity of semantic relationships. All of the characters interpret
allegorically, yet these interpretations are not brought to any au-
thoritative synthesis; they remain trenchantly subjective and indi-
vidual. Hester interprets the scarlet letter figuratively: beyond the
primary significance of sin she perceives a meaning that offers her
a special dispensation from the norms of her society. Alienated
from the Puritan community, she rejects its laws and assumes a
'freedom of speculation' that allows her to rethink the entire struc-
ture of culturally determined meanings. The 'natural consecration'
of her sin that she sees symbolized by her embellishment of the
scarlet letter permits her to reconcile the natural with the divine in
her vision of the future. Chillingworth, in contrast, concentrates his
hermeneutic energies in the search for Hester's co-Adulterer, signi-
fied by the scarlet 'A'. Chillingworth seeks the partner in sin who
would complete the significance of the letter but a fixed meaning,
even such a literal meaning as this, eludes the physician's hermen-
eutic grasp. For the meaning of the scarlet letter is ambiguously
related to a further and even more elusive sign: the living stigmata
upon Dimmesdale's breast. The Reverend Dimmesdale is himself
caught amid the various significances of the scarlet letter. Divine
judgement, carnal sin, paternal guilt: he attempts to bring these
meanings together while eluding civil judgement. As a result of
his obsession with the physical letter, he never discovers within
the sign the spirit that heals; he finds only that the letter can, in-
deed, kill.
Of all the characters in Hawthorne's narrative it is, ironically,
the Puritan minister, Dimmesdale, who interprets most consistently
in subjective terms. Where one would expect from an orthodox
Congregationalist - such as he is - a conventional typological inter-
pretation of the sign, Dimmesdale posits himself rather than God as
the primary referent of the scarlet letter. The arbitrary nature of such
an interpretation serves to undercut the authoritative view of the
colonial mission into the wilderness within a narrative that persist-
ently questions the validity of received notions of Providence. So
the arrival of the physician Chillingworth, who is to be the diabolical
agent of Dimmesdale's death, at a time when the sainted preacher

is ill is explained by the Puritan community as a special or 'remark-
able providence'. But to the citizens' observation of 'a providential
hand in Roger Chillingworth's so opportune arrival' (p. 222), the
narrator adds his perception that Chillingworth appears to have
had 'Divine permission, for a season, to burrow into the clergy-
man's intimacy, and plot against his soul' (p. 227).
This sceptical enquiry into the concept of providential inter-
cession culminates in the vision of a celestial 'A' and its interpreta-
tion as a prefigurative or typological sign of divine judgement. The
Puritan community see in this sign the transformation of Governor
Winthrop, upon his death, into an 'Angel'. But Dimmesdale sees
the sign as God's public judgement of an adulterer. The conflict
between the two interpretations renders the sign ambiguous in its
reality and its import. The narrator sets out the traditional signifi-
cance accorded typological interpretation and then promptly dis-
misses the subjective value of typology.
A scroll so wide [as the cope of heaven] might not be deemed too
expansive for Providence to write a people's doom upon. The
belief was a favorite one with our forefathers, as betokening that
their infant commonwealth was under a celestial guardianship of
peculiar intimacy and strictness. But what shall we say, when an
individual discovers a revelation, addressed to himself alone, on
the same vast sheet of record! (p. 252).
Only a 'highly disordered mental state' could extend the minister's

egotism 'over the whole expanse of nature, until the firmament
itself shuld appear no more than a fitting page for his soul's history
and fate' (p. 252). Dimmesdale elevates his individual suffering to
such a height that it supplants the Deity as the 'transcendental sig-
nified' that unifies signs within a typological scheme. The effect of
subjective interpretation here, as throughout The Scarlet Letter, is to
reduce interpretation to the identification of one-to-one referential
relationships. The subjective allegorism represented by Hawthorne,
and also Melville, offers a powerful critique of the fundamental
assumptions not only of Romantic aesthetics but also of Protestant
exegesis. The repercussions of this critique extend to all interpre-
tative judgements and hence to all assessments of value, which are
made obscure and difficult by a pervasive sense of ambiguity.
The indeterminacy introduced to the narrative by the absence of
an objective hermeneutic authority characterizes the allegory of

Melville's The Confidence-Man. Throughout the narrative the quest
for a normative relationship between signs and their significances
is frustrated by the absence of a 'transcendental signified' which
would sanction referential relations among the narrative's constitu-
ent parts. No objective interpretative context is discovered in The
Confidence-Man, with the result that the narrative is unable to pri-
vilege any single interpretation of its signs. The very quality of
Melville's prose casts doubt upon our capacity for understanding,
as in his description of the woman Goneril:
Goneril was young, in person lithe and straight, indeed, for a

woman, a complexion naturally rosy, and which would have been
charmingly so, but for a certain hardness and bakedness, like that
of the glazed colors on stone-ware.... Upon the whole, aided by
the resources of the toilet, her appearance at distance was such,
that some might have thought her, if anything, rather beautiful,
though of a style of beauty rather peculiar and cactus-like.9
Upon the whole, the image that emerges from this euphemistic
rhetoric is of a woman who is anything but beautiful! The accuracy
or otherwise of this description cannot, however, be validated.
Goneril is purely a creation of language; she exists only within a
story told by the Confidence-Man, a story confirmed by him and
repeated to him in several of his 'masks' or personae. The descrip-
tion as it is quoted above is recounted in words other than the
original teller's and immediately Goneril's story is reinterpreted.
The reader has access neither to the woman herself nor to any
authority other than the Confidence-Man in order to verify the truth
of the tale.
The story of Goneril is one element of Melville's enquiry into the
function of rhetoric as a mediator between perception and inter-
pretation. This is one of a number of interpolated narratives which
vary from anecdotes to short stories, all of which are available to
mutually exclusive interpretations that are equally plausible and,
further, that block hermeneutic access to any conclusive evidence.
These fictions invariably originate with the Confidence-Man, the
duplicitous hero, whose identity is one of the most perplexing of
the narrative's many puzzles.
The Confidence-Man makes his first appearance as the 'lamb-like'
deaf-mute but the Christological connotations of this description
are counterbalanced by the simultaneous announcement of the ar-

rival of a 'mysterious imposter' upon the Fidele. The ship is osten-
sibly travelling from St Louis to Cairo, but the potential spiritual
significance of the journey is underlined by the narrator's likening
the passengers to 'Chaucer's Canterbury pilgrims, or those oriental
ones crossing the Red Sea towards Mecca' (p. 15). But the narrative
suggests that the journey towards the scene of redemption may in
fact be progressing in reverse. In the guise of the 'president and
transfer-agent' of the Black River Coal Company, the Confidence-
Man carries a ledger in which he inscribes the names of his victims.
The potential significance of this book as a Book of the Damned is
suggested by the Confidence-Man's claim that he has been 'sub-
poenaed with it to court' (p. 54): implicitly, to the Celestial Court
upon Judgement Day. But, in contradiction to these infernal con-
notations, are his attempts to attract investment in the New Jerusa-
lem which he describes as 'the new and thriving city', with its
'perpetual fountain' and 'lignum vitae' (p. 57). The failure to interest
his victims in anything but coal shares reflects less upon his spir-
itual condition than it does upon theirs. Each encounter with the
Confidence-Man follows the pattern of temptation, exposure of
human weakness, and then 'fall', as he tricks his fellow passengers
with his wiles.
It is the penultimate encounter or confrontation of the Confidence-
Man with the ship's barber that marks the culmination of the nar-
rative's enquiry into the capacity of language, subjectively interpreted,
to reveal truth. Initially, the deaf-mute's admonitions to practise
charity were juxtaposed with the barber's sign: 'No Trust'. So the
Confidence-Man confronts the barber, to question the significance of
this sign. Throughout the episode the multiple significances of the
word 'trust' are played upon: its literal significance as 'credit', its
figurative meaning as 'belief, and its spiritual significance as 'faith'
or 'charity'. But the barber, like the rest of the passengers aboard
the Fidele, has a literal comprehension of language and is only con-
fused by the Confidence-Man's continual reference to the 'spirit' of
the letter. So the barber is asked to demonstrate his understanding
of 'trust' in a hypothetical case. The Confidence-Man proposes that
you see a stranger, his face accidentally averted, but his visible
part very respectable looking; what now, barber - 1 put it to your
conscience, to your charity - what would be your impression of
that man, in a moral point of view? Being in a signal sense a
stranger, would you, for that, signally set him down for a knave?
(p. 235).
This 'stranger' is identified, cross-referentially, with the Confidence-

Man himself, who, in the guise of the deaf-mute, was described as
being 'in the extremest sense of the word, a stranger' (p. 9). The
barber, with his inability to perceive the spiritual dimension of
language, thus reveals his part in 'that insincerity [which] is the
most universal and inveterate vice of man - the lasting bar to real
amelioration, whether of individuals or of the world' (p. 235).
The barber's failure to pass this test of his 'trust' creates the con-
text in which the narrative enacts, in R. W. B. Lewis's words, 'a
ritual of cosmic obliteration' as it reveals the final triumph of the
Confidence-Man.10 Yet, as he enters the ship's cabin like a 'bride-
groom tripping to the bridal chamber', the pious old man whom he
encounters is likened to Simeon who, 'having at last beheld the
Master of Faith, he Blessed him and departed in peace' (p. 248).
Even now, in the guise of the Cosmopolitan, the Confidence-Man
declares his faith, his 'confidence' in all men. But the old man, this
pseudo-Simeon, is duped into betraying his lack of trust. As they
talk, the Cosmopolitan quotes from the Apocrypha's description
of Satan; exclamations are heard from the darkened berths, cries
which Lewis likens to blasts of the apocalyptic trumpets: 'Who's
that describing the confidence-man?' and 'What's that about the
Apocalypse?' (pp. 250-1). So, as the Cosmopolitan extinguishes the
last lamp and the likeness of the altar of God wanes, the ensuing
darkness suggests not the darkness of an upheaval which ushers in
a period of millennial bliss but the darkness of wholesale destruction.
Throughout, the narrative has balanced the Christological and
demonic connotations of the Confidence-Man and his project. This
is matched by a sustained critique of the religious claim to knowl-
edge, which has been subject to an extended analogy between reli-
gion and fiction. The status of the Bible as an authoritative source
of truth has been weakened by an emphasis upon the apocryphal
books, while revelation as a pure access to truth and knowledge
has been represented by the mysterious 'advent' of the Confidence-
Man himself. In the absence of a comprehensive, authoritative
context which invokes a transcendental sanction for the narrative's
meanings, there can be found no absolute significance in any of the
signs of Melville's narrative and the entire question of interpreta-
tive privilege has to be deferred indefinitely.
In the absence of transcendental sanction, the subjective quest for

self-knowledge so easily becomes the assertion of egotism, as Ahab
discovers at his peril. This is also the experience of the character
Aylmer in Hawthorne's short narrative, "The Birth-Mark'. Hawthorne
uses a subjective mode of interpretation to reveal Aylmer's spiritual
myopia and his egotism. The opening paragraphs of the story es-
tablish an opposition between Aylmer's love of science and love
for his wife, Georgiana. This opposition is represented as a conflict
between the quest for an absolute 'creative force' which would make
available 'new worlds' for the philosopher, on the one hand, and
satisfaction with the contingent and imperfect human realm, on the
other.11 The two are intertwined in, and the conflict exemplified by,
Aylmer's attempt to remove the single sign of his wife's earthly
mortality: the birth-mark which stands as her 'visible mark of earthly
imperfection' (p. 260). Aylmer becomes obsessed with the scientific
redemption of fallen nature which he hopes to achieve by perfect-
ing his wife's beauty. He misguidedly seeks a spiritual absolute in
the form of a literal reality. It is not enough for him that, as the
narrator describes, Georgiana's beauty should point to its divine
source. Rather, he would have that sacrality made present to him
in Georgiana's living form. That the transformation of the divine
into the corporeal would destroy its transcendent nature does not
deter him, for Aylmer does not seek to incarnate the Creator in the
image of Georgiana; rather, he desires himself to usurp the place of
Creator by manufacturing the 'one living specimen of ideal loveli-
ness' (p. 261).
While Aylmer literalizes the spiritual, the narrator sets this ego-
tistical form of interpretation within the context of a contrasting
typological style of interpretation. The narrator perceives the corpo-
real as a sign of the divine, and the present as a part of an unfolding
historical design. Where Aylmer rejects signification as an arbitrary
mode of reference, the narrator views it as the means by which
spiritual truths are communicated to unredeemed humanity. This
interpretation is most clearly articulated in the narrator's descrip-
tion of the birth-mark itself:
It was the fatal flaw of humanity, which Nature, in one shape or

another, stamps ineffaceably on all her productions, either to imply
that they are temporary and finite, or that their perfection must
be wrought by toil and pain. The Crimson Hand expressed the
ineludible grip, in which mortality clutches the highest and purest
of earthly mould, degrading them into kindred with the lowest,

and even with the very brutes, like whom their visible frames
return to dust (p. 261).
The birth-mark is a sign of the Maker's hand and the, as yet, un-
redeemed nature of humanity and as such offers to compromise
Aylmer's philosophical striving by reminding him that all men are
as much flesh as they are spirit. So Aylmer risks all in the doomed
attempt to remove the one flaw upon Georgiana's otherwise ethereal
beauty. In his subjective perception, she should not display contra-
dictory signs; he would have her sensible frame exhibit a symbolic
identity with her perfection of spirit while failing to recognize that
her mortality is her immortality made manifest. As the narrator
explains, '[t]he fatal Hand had grappled with the mystery of life,
and was the bond by which an angelic spirit kept itself in union
with a mortal frame' (p. 277). The concoction which removes the
birth-mark also destroys Georgiana's earthly part, and so she dies,
the victim of Aylmer's egotism and arrogance. He has failed to
interpret within a wider context which would explain the status of
the birth-mark as a sign of some reality beyond the horizon of
Aylmer's subjective perception: 'he failed to look beyond the shad-
owy scope of Time, and living once for all in Eternity, to find the
perfect Future in the present' (p. 278), the narrator advises us.
The primacy of subjective interpretation within American Ro-
mantic thought also produces a separation of social institutions and
public morality from their legitimation by an objective scriptural
authority. Morality becomes a private and personal matter where
the individual alone is responsible for deciding between right and
wrong, good and evil, with no external means of legitimizing any
single choice. The consequences of this separation for the individual
who is sensitive to the complexities of moral choice are explored in
Melville's Pierre. This narrative maps the topography of a referential
chasm which is seen to separate the biblical and social significances
of Christianity in nineteenth-century American culture.
Initially, Pierre Glendinning possesses an unquestioning belief in
the literal truth of those meanings which are dictated to him by his
family and his Church. Doubt is cast upon this certitude initially by
the inscrutable face of Isabel, such a face as, 'compounded so of hell
and heaven, overthrow[s] in us all foregone persuasions, and make[s]
us wondering children in this world again'.12 It is after reading the
letter in which Isabel claims to be his illegitimate half-sister that
Pierre finds all his previous certainties are gone. He believes the
literal truth of Isabel's claim to kinship, but faith in this one claim
destroys the truth of all other claims. In an attempt to elude the
complexities of the situation in which he finds himself, Pierre re-
solves to discover an absolute distinction between the 'True' and
the 'False', the natural and the conventional: '[hjenceforth I will
know nothing but Truth; glad Truth, or sad Truth; I will know
what it is, and do what my deepest angel dictates' (p. 90). Until this
point in the narrative all of Pierre's perceptions and judgements
have been mediated by the idealized image of his dead father:
'Pierre's fond personification of perfect human goodness and virtue'
(p. 93). Now that this authority has been debased by Isabel's revela-
tion, Pierre attempts to interpret his memories of his father so as
to bring the past into relation with the newly-discovered 'Truth'
uncovered by Isabel. Pierre considers the two portraits of his father,
in youth and in age, and tries to create a compound image. This
attempt is typical of Pierre's hermeneutic weakness. Although he
seeks an authoritative distinction between apparent and 'real' mean-
ings, Pierre has no faith in mixed and multiple meanings. He tries
to find the image of his 'real' father and is disappointed to discover
instead layer upon layer of masks and deceptions.
As an extension of this new awareness of duplicity, Pierre finds
that the relationship between the ethical categories of truth and
falsehood are inextricably confused. Certainly ethical and spiritual
categories are hopelessly confused in Melville's representation of
conventional Christianity: 'sometimes a lie is heavenly, and truth
infernal' (p. 128), Pierre discovers. Reverend Falsgrave exemplifies
this ambiguity. Falsgrave presents the perfect image of a Christian
gentleman, in possession of the physical beauty and moral good-
ness to which Pierre has been taught to aspire. Yet when Falsgrave
is faced with a real and specific moral dilemma - Ned's adultery
and Delly's illegitimate child - he is concerned with the preservation
of social niceties rather than the advancement of anyone's spiritual
welfare. He condones Mrs Glendinning's cruelty, her adherence to
the literal letter of the biblical law and her recommendation of Old
Testament censure in place of Christian mercy: all of which re-
sponses are directed towards the preservation of 'proper' social
distinctions. Pierre is appalled by these responses to a dilemma so
close to that which he faces: Isabel's illegitimacy and his own father's
adultery.
Pierre and Isabel resolve to redeem the sins of their father by
living out an absolute distinction between the earthly and the divine.
Pierre rejects all intermediaries, particularly Falsgrave and the
Church he represents, and determines that he personally shall seek
knowledge direct from God himself, 'whom', Pierre muses, 'I now
know, never delegates His holiest admonishings' (p. 230). How-
ever, to acknowledge Isabel as his legal kin, Pierre finds that he
must marry her. They are unable to escape the entanglements of the
world for this act violates all the commitments Pierre has made to
his mother, to his fiancee Lucy, and to the entire community of his
family and associates. When, finally, he has acted, and stops to
ponder the change brought about in this web of personal and social
relationships, Pierre finds that the whole issue of his allegiances -
in whose interests he should act and whose interests should be
sacrificed - remains entirely ambiguous. And he is completely with-
out any external interpretative authority by which to verify the
value of his actions.
The imperishable monument of his Holy Catholic Church; the

imperishable record of his Holy Bible; the imperishable intuition
of the innate truth of Christianity; - these were the indestructible
anchors which still held the priest to his firm Faith's rock, when
the sudden storm raised by the Evil One assailed him. But Pierre
- where could he find the Church, the monument, the Bible, which
unequivocally said to him - 'Go on; thou art in the Right; I en-
dorse thee all over; go on' (pp. 285-6).
All of these potential authorities Pierre finds contradict his experi-

ence of the world.
This difference is expounded at length in Plotinus Plinlimmon's
pamphlet. There, the distinction which Pierre seeks between a realm
of absolute reality, unmediated knowledge and singular reference,
on the one hand, and an uncertain world of ambiguous realities,
highly mediated knowledge, and multiple reference, on the other,
is described as the distinction between 'chronometricals' and
'horologicals', respectively. Pirre rejects horologicals as subjective
and approximate, yet he is denied the objective reality of chrono-
metricals. Above all, Pierre rejects the compromise between the two
advocated by the pamphlet; the same compromise he has discov-
ered and condemned in conventional Christianity and professing
Christians. In the days of his unquestioning youth, Pierre accepted
the values of social convention and was able to nurture the illusion
that he lived 'chronometrically'. Now that he has violated all of

those conventions, and his family are concerned to destroy rather
than preserve his chronometrical illusions, Pierre is obliged to recog-
nize that life always was 'horological'. In allegorical terms, Pierre
finds that his belief in a redemptive, transcendental unity is a con-
venient illusion; all interpretation takes the conventional form of
simile rather than identity. It is only in the absence of an author-
itative hermeneutic context, when signs are cut adrift from their
conventional meanings, that Pierre is able to recognize the gap which
separates images from their significances, and which is filled or
supplemented by a subjective projection of meaning.
The absence of an authoritative objective context for interpreta-
tion generates the scathing satire upon contemporary Christianity,
and orthodox assumptions about interpretation and its social impli-
cations, in Pierre. In Melville's earlier narrative, Mardi, satire again
is generated as a consequence of the frustrated pursuit of meaning.
There, the narrative proceeds through a series of encounters with
debased worldly values. From one of the islands of Mardi to the
next the quest is pursued for the maiden Yilla, to whom attach the
significances of primal innocence, purity, and happiness, elevated to
a quasi-divine status. To each island, and its king, is attributed a
metaphoric meaning: Borobolla symbolizes epicureanism, Maramma
superstition, Donjalolo the poetic world, Oh Oh erudition, Pimminy
the fashionable world; the sequence is extended as the failure to
discover Yilla is displaced and resumed on the next island. The
second volume delineates the modern political world by symboliz-
ing contemporary nations as islands: England as Dominora, France
as Franko, Spain Iberie, Rome Romara, Germany Apsburga, Canada
as Kannida; America is symbolized as Vivenza, the land of life, and
Europe is translated into Porphyro, the morning star - yet none of
these reveal Yillah.13 This satirical sequence ends when the narra-
tive shifts to the metaphysical realm and the island of Serenia, 'where
Mardians pretend to the unnatural conjunction of reason with things
revealed; where Alma, they say, is restored to his divine original;
where... men strive to live together in gentle bonds of peace and
charity' (pp. 622-3).
Serenia is confused with Maramma in the minds of the questors
who bring to bear a sceptical and primarily metaphoric mode of
perception. They refuse the typological possibility that if Alma (the
saviour) should once more descend then Mardi would present a
millennial scene of true human happiness. Yilla is not discovered
on Serenia. The narrative lacks the kind of context that could repre-
sent Yilla as a sign of the divine and is dominated instead by the
subjective method of attributing significance which inheres in meta-
phor. It is the absence of Yilla that provides a normative inter-
pretation of the narrative's signs. Her absence even explains the
narrative's inconclusive conclusion. Caught between the desire for
absolute, pure meaning and an inability to conceive of it, the hero
declares: 'I am my soul's own emperor; and my first act is abdica-
tion! Hail! realm of shades!' (p. 654). He brings the narrative not so
much to a conclusion but to an end, as the narrator describes: 'thus,
pursuers and pursued flew on, over an endless sea' (p. 654).
The sovereignty of the individual within Romantic thought has
consequences for the writer of allegory who attempts to negotiate
a path between the demands of public morality and a subjective
aesthetic imperative. The problematics of this endeavour are set out
in Hawthorne's prefaces, where he argues in favour of the 'romance'
as opposed to allegory, on the one hand, and verisimilitude, on the
other. The degraded status of allegory within Romantic theory
involves the assumption that allegory is a form of moralizing,
in contrast to the expressive form of the symbol. This assumption
contributes the substance of Edgar Allan Poe's infamous attack
on Hawthorne's allegorism, an attack which Henry James called
'pretentious, spiteful, [and] vulgar'.14 Poe describes the allegorical
quality of Hawthorne's writing as not 'original' but 'peculiar', due
to a peculiarity which - 'having the least concern with Nature, is
the farthest removed from the popular intellect, from the popular
sentiment and from the popular taste' - is the strain of allegory.15
Consequently, in Poe's judgement, Hawthorne cannot remain any-
thing but unpopular so long as he persists with allegory and resists
'a career of honest, upright, sensible, prehensible and comprehen-
sible things' (p. 150). Poe judged that allegory makes its appeal only
to the fancy; allegory adapts the real to the unreal and thus connects
'something with nothing', disrupting verisimilitude and destroying
the 'unity of effect' which, in Poe's estimation, every writer should
strive to achieve. Yet allegorical moralization was precisely the style
of which Hawthorne's reviewers approved. An extreme instance is
provided by Arthur Cleveland Coxe in his 1851 review of The Scarlet
Letter for the Church Review. In "The Writings of Hawthorne', he
exhorts Hawthorne against becoming a 'trifler' and reminds him
that '[p]arable and allegory have been the vehicle of wisdom, among
all cultivated nations; yes, of inspired wisdom, too;... stories should
be always of moral benefit to those whole faculties of soul, and

mind, and heart, with which GOD claims to be loved and served.
Here is the standard, therefore, by which we are to estimate the tale
writer.'16
In his prefaces Hawthorne appears to be singularly aware of the
dangers of a too-literal interpretation of both the real and of the
ideal. He defends his fictional practice by explaining, repeatedly,
the intended relationships which he has tried to establish between
allegory and romance, on the one hand, and the historical social
world of modern America, on the other. For example, in the 1851
preface to Twice-Told Tales he explains that the allegory of his stories
requires to be read as it was written, as part of an attempt 'to open
an intercourse with the world', and Hawthorne insists that every
sentence, 'so far as it embodies thought or sensibility, may be under-
stood and felt by anybody, who will give himself the trouble to
read it, and will take up the book in a proper mood'.17 But in the
preface to The House of the Seven Gables, the reader is warned that
both an abstract moral and the concrete circumstances of the fic-
tional plot can be too clearly depicted; that historical precision can
encourage a literal belief in that which is only figuratively accurate.
Literal interpretation 'exposes the Romance to an inflexible and
exceedingly dangerous species of criticism, by bringing his fancy-
pictures almost into positive contact with the realities of the moment'.
But The House of the Seven Gables has 'a great more to do with the
clouds overhead than with any portion of the soil of the County of
Essex'.18
In the preface to The Blithedale Romance, the conditions prevailing
in American culture are blamed for a general predisposition towards
literal-mindedness, a perspective which reduces the ideal (or sym-
bolic) to the allegorical by exposing the referential gap that separ-
ates the signifier from the signified and thus denies the fictive illusion
of presence.
In the old countries, with which Fiction has long been conver-
sant, a certain conventional privilege seems to be awarded to the
romancer; his work is not put exactly side by side with nature;
and he is allowed a license with regard to every-day Probability,
in view of the improved effects which he is bound to produce
thereby. Among ourselves, on the contrary, there is as yet no
such Faery Land, so like the real world, that, in a suitable remote-
ness, one cannot well tell the difference, but with an atmosphere
of strange enchantment, beheld through which the inhabitants

have a propriety of their own. This atmosphere is what the Ameri-
can romancer needs. In its absence, the beings of imagination are
compelled to show themselves in the same category as actually
living mortals; a necessity that generally renders the paint and
pasteboard of their composition but too painfully discernible.19
The desire to resist the semantic closure which results from the
unification of the sign and its significance, where each is identical
with the other, appears to underlie Hawthorne's complaint. And it
is the desire to resist fixed meanings, whether they are represented
in verisimilar or allegorical styles, that motivates his assertion that
the writer must be granted the right to choose his own style of
representation. Hawthorne chooses to keep open as many represen-
tational options as possible, and in this way to balance the conflict-
ing claims of a desire for semantic plenitude and a sceptical denial
of the possibility of plenitude.
Hawthorne's anxiety concerning the dangers of literal misinter-
pretation is related to his awareness of the absence of an author-
itative context for interpretation. Hawthorne's ambiguity, which
permits an entire constellation of localized allegories to remain an
unreconciled plurality, is sustained by the perpetual interpretative
activity of an isolated exegete, like Aylmer or Chillingworth or
Dimmesdale, who is able to construct allegories but cannot invoke
an external authority which would provide a single unifying meta-
allegory. All interpreted signs belong to a past which, in Frank
Kermode's words, is seen not in terms of 'inherited certainties' but
is perceived in the context of 'cultivated uncertainties'.20
The types inscribed by [Hawthorne's texts] are shifting, unstable,

varying in force, to be fulfilled only by the determinations of the
reader; in strong contrast, then, to the old Puritan types. So the
text belongs to its moment and implicitly declares that the mod-
ern classic is not, like the book of God or the old book of Nature,
or the old accommodated classic, of which the senses, though
perhaps hidden, are fully determined, there before the interpreter.
In the making of it the reader must take his share.21
So if the significance of Hawthorne's text is to be determined by the

solitary exegete, the reader in imitation of the allegorical protago-
nist, then readers are offered an invitation to discover in the text
their own subjective beings. In the absence of God or any transcen-

dental principle there is found a corresponding absence of any single
solution to the problematic diversity of Hawthorne's allegorical
significances. All authority is vested in the reader, but a privileged
stance from which to discriminate among interpretations is denied.
By filling the gap between allegorical sign and referent with the
vicarious plenitude of subjectivity, the allegorism of American
Romanticism effectively denied the sources of its own rhetorical
validation and produced a rhetoric of ambiguity constructed from
a multiplicity of referential fragments.
5
Nathaniel Hawthorne's
Rappaccini's Daughter and
the Sovereignty of the Self
In the preface to Rappaccini's Daughter, Hawthorne admits to 'an
inveterate love of allegory'.1 The whimsical tone of the preface
should not obscure the irony of this confession. Allegory is blamed
for the obscurity of his reputation; 'popular' yet 'insubstantial', alle-
gory is rejected both by the Transcendentalists and by 'the multitude'.
Yet these very oppositions contribute the substance of allegories
such as Rappaccini's Daughter - narratives which put into question
established ways of knowing, of approaching, even of ascertaining
the existence of, the transcendent as the ultimate signified of the
mundane: the 'One' amid the multitude. If Rappaccini's Daughter is
unable to satisfy the 'requisitions' of, or 'tastes' set by, established
epistemologies it is because the assumptions of both idealism and
pragmatism are necessarily disrupted by the allegorical nature of
the narrative. Ironically, the authorial complaint functions simultane-
ously as an authorial rationale. The conditions which enable the
narrative's existence also determine the narrative's non-existence in
Hawthorne's assessment of his worldly reputation.
This ironic coincidence of opposed ontological assumptions points
to the nature of Hawthorne's allegory even as it sustains the Realism/
Idealism debate within which Hawthorne's work has been entrapped
for more than a century. One consequence of this debate, which has
tended to focus upon issues peripheral to the question of Haw-
thorne's allegorism, has been the obscuring of the fact that many
kinds of narrative technique assemble under the rubric of allegory.
The genre is mixed in an exemplary fashion - many kinds of alle-
gorical discourse participate in the genre; which is to say, in any
given allegorical text. In these terms, Hawthorne's allegories are
not exceptional. However, they are distinctive in the way in which
they engage discourses of idealism and pragmatism.
103
In Rappaccini's Daughter, as in many allegorical narratives, a plural-

ity of discourses is organized into a recognizable generic structure
by the quest motif. All allegories describe the pursuit of an epistemol-
ogy which will represent an ideal ontology manifest in textual
images. That is, allegory seeks, through an explicitly narrative-based
quest, an interpretative structure that will make intelligible the onto-
logical nature of the narrative signs by representing these signs in
terms of a transcendental signified. As Hawthorne indicates, allegory
situates itself in 'an unfortunate position between the Transcend-
entalists... [and] the multitude', by seeking a formal relationship
between the spiritual and the social. The preface itself issues an
imperative to seek identity - the identity of the 'Author' and his
'Works' - from the evidence of a self-consciously indeterminate
text.
As I suggested in Chapter 2, allegory presupposes a fracture within
a once-Edenic referentiality. A singular, pure, transparent referen-
tial structure becomes a dissonance of partial and obscure signify-
ing forms. Allegorical narrative sets itself the task of working through
this Babel-like plurality, in a quest for the privileged interpretative
mode that will translate multiplicity into a pristine singularity. Joel
Fineman, in a suggestive discussion of the relationship between
allegory and psychoanalysis, describes this hermeneutic quest struc-
ture as the search for a lost origin, a nostalgic seeking after the
originary One, prior to language and history but disseminated in
both.
Distanced at the beginning from its source, allegory will set out
on an increasingly futile search for a signifier with which to re-
cuperate the fracture of and at its source, and with each succes-
sive signifier the fracture and the search begin again: a structure
of continual yearning, the insatiable desire of allegory.2
The mystical signified, when expressed in language, ceases to be

pure transcendence and becomes a signified dependent upon a
mundane signifier; yet it is language, the scene of the primal frac-
ture, that alone offers a potential access to transcendence. This is
the paradox that complicates and motivates allegory. Absolutes
cannot be held apart and yet they cannot be collapsed together:
Truth and Falsehood, Good and Evil, ideal and real, sacred and
profane, subjective and objective, private and public, self and Other
- absolute contraries are not the same nor are they radically different.
Nathaniel Hawthorne's Rappaccini's Daughter 105
The difference between kinds of allegorical discourse can be

thought of in terms of the extent to which this paradox is developed
into an aporia. That is, the extent to which any allegorical text com-
mits itself to the representation of an ideal reality. In rhetorical
terms, this difference would reside in the narrative's professed ability
to transform its metaphors into symbols, to transform a represented
transcendence into a transcendental presence. A narrative that ap-
proaches an ideal structure would proceed by a sequential accumu-
lation of divine significances; narrative signifieds would become
secondary signifiers referring to the transcendental signified. This is
a process that culminates in a decisive turn away from temporal
discourse towards the realm of 'Being', a turn that effectively dis-
places meaning away from the profane and into sacred writing.
Some allegorical narratives employ this narrative technique in
order to clarify the distinction between ontological categories. In an
epiphanic 'turn' this distinction is relocated intertextually in some
sacred, as opposed to narrative, discourse. Typology, which pre-
serves the identity of autonomous but related categories, is privileged
as a recuperative hermeneutic mode. But there does exist another
allegorical tradition which pursues the idealistic formula for al-
legory only to subvert and critique the idealistic assumptions in
which the allegorical structure is grounded. These allegories elabo-
rate a radical convergence between discrete ontological categories.
The pattern of nostalgia transformed into recuperation becomes, in
these ironic allegories, a lament turned into resignation.
Allegory of the kind represented by Rappaccini's Daughter takes
the patterning of ironic allegory one step further and not only sub-
verts the ontological assumption that such a meeting of realities can
occur but also attacks the notion of epistemological access to either
reality as a pure, autonomous object of knowledge. Where idealistic
allegories attempt to mystify a transcendental signifying relation
and so evade the paradox of allegorical representation, Rappaccini's
Daughter provides a model of allegory as it has been described by
Paul de Man: Hawthorne's short allegory offers itself as a paradigm
of the 'deconstructive' allegorical narrative.
The paradigm of all texts consists of a figure and its deconstruction.

But since this model cannot be closed off by a final reading, it
engenders, in its turn, a supplementary superposition which nar-
rates the unreadability of the prior narration. As distinguished
from primary deconstructive narratives centered on figures and
ultimately always on metaphor, we can call such narratives to the

second (or the third) degree allegories.3
The semantic contamination that marks the attempt to represent

absolute, univocal, categories is emblematized by the poison - which
is unequivocally neither physical nor metaphysical - that infects
Rappaccini's garden. Rappaccini's Daughter not only elaborates the
indeterminate semantic status of the poison but displays its nar-
rative nature as symptomatic of the referential contagion that taints
all assumptions of essential identity. So Rappaccini's Daughter narrates
the conditions of its own unreadability; a dialectic between image
and ideal, the shadow and the substance, remains an unconsum-
mated play of allegorical signs. The ways in which the allegorical
narrative achieves its deconstruction is the subject of this chapter.
Rappaccini's Daughter begins by creating an intertextual context
where such a dialectic can be brought to a transcendental synthesis,
where an idea can be made present in the particular. By alluding to
Dante's Inferno, in the action of the plot, the text suggests that it
possesses the potential to manifest ideals. Almost at the same time
as this possibility is introduced, however, the text undercuts its
own access to metaphysical significance.
It is the ontological and epistemological status of Rappaccini's
garden and the poison that infects it which brings into play the
whole problem of the capacity of signs to signify extra-literal or
metaphoric truths. We are presented with a large-scale allegorical
image, a figure reminiscent of Edmund Spenser's Garden of Adonis
and the Bower of Bliss or the Garden of the Heavenly Lamb and
the Garden of Mirth in Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun's
Romance of the Rose. Textual antecedents such as these serve to ques-
tion the nature of Rappaccini's garden. The Edenic associations of
this 'fallen' garden - 'the Eden of the present world' (p. 96) - are
made tenuous by the contiguity of Vertumnus and the myth that he
names. Will Giovanni's presence here cultivate a classical rebirth?
Images of opulence and decay are delicately poised, as in the shat-
tered fountain: its original design is obscured by the chaos of its
fragments, yet it remains 'an immortal spirit, that sang its song
unceasingly' (p. 94). The fountain is a kind of 'threshold symbol'4
- akin to the wild rosebush of The Scarlet Letter - that contains and
initiates an investigation into the relationship between signs and
significances. The fountain questions the relation of form to con-
tent: it reifies the problem. As a metaphor, the shattered 'vehicle'
bears an ambiguous relation to its 'immortal spirit'. The fountain

may also bear a wider historical significance by alluding to those
images of classical ruin which appear in fifteenth-century nativities.
These pictorial ruins signify the obsolescence of the classical world
within the context of the new covenant.5 The promise of meaning
extended by Rappaccini's fountain is fractured; a new referential
covenant, a new construction of the relation between the real and
the ideal, is as yet an enigma.
In these opening pages, the reader is obliged to speculate, along
with Giovanni, about the significance of the scene set out as in a
tableau. Our perceptions are, however, guided by the conscious-
ness of the narrator and our judgements are directed by his adjec-
tival prerogative. So, we are informed that 'Giovanni's fancy may
have grown morbid' as he imagines Beatrice to be 'the human sister
of those vegetable ones' (p. 97) in Rappaccini's garden. As will be
increasingly problematic, Giovanni bases this interpretation upon
the evidence of his senses, evidence which is evaluated by subjec-
tive imagination as the trace of an absolute or essential identity. He
ignores completely the central problem: the relation between explicit
and implicit meanings, and the questionable value of appearance as
indicative of 'substance'.
The problematics of the relations between phenomena, sensory
perception, the imagination and rational knowledge are located
primarily in the consciousness of Giovanni. Inevitably, as the nar-
rator discloses this psychological dynamic, he provides a comment-
ary upon it, inviting us to follow suit. It is through the modulation
of information flow - by controlling the distance between Giovanni's
consciousness and the narrator's - that the narrative is able to demon-
strate the failure of an idealistic epistemology. The disclosure is
made hermeneutically in the telling of the tale. Our access to informa-
tion is guided by the mediation of the narrator's metacommentary.
For instance, Giovanni's perception of an analogy between Beatrice
and her 'vegetable sister' is given first as an 'observation', which
the narrator alters parenthetically to a 'fancy'. No such awareness
of the workings of his cognitive faculty is evinced by Giovanni. His
ability to judge - or even to perceive - accurately is undercut by the
narrator. Giovanni himself doubts the veracity of his senses but
does not hesitate to transfer these doubts to Beatrice: 'beautiful,
shall I call her - or inexplicably terrible?' (p. 103), he wonders.
At this stage, the narrator dismisses Giovanni's hermeneutic
foibles, but they are symptomatic of the difficulty Giovanni finds
in reading the garden as a 'symbolic language' or, indeed, as an

allegorical image. He struggles with the seemingly contradictory
significations of signs, unable to reconcile literal and metaphoric
meanings. The image of beauty contaminated with the fatality of
poison is a concept he cannot comprehend. Giovanni is an idealist,
because and in spite of his literal-mindedness. He assumes that the
limits of the real coincide with the perceptual capacity of his senses.
If the spiritual exists, then he should be able to see it; if he can see
Beatrice as an angel then her nature is angelic - alternatively, if he
sees her as such, she is demonic. Giovanni denies any referential
gap between sign and signified in the radical literality of his inter-
pretation. However, totalizing absolutes do not remain discrete
categories and signs do not signify in univocal terms. Rappaccini's
poison may be merely vegetable or it may be demonic; Beatrice
may be divine or satanic - the categories shift continually, as nar-
rative signs resist Giovanni's totalizing hermeneutic. His response
is to formulate a dualistic interpretation. Consequently, while the
character of the objects he perceives is presented ambiguously, both
his nocturnal suspicions and his subsequent daylight rationalizations
are expressed with equal gravity by the narrator, in whose judge-
ments, however, Giovanni's cognitive weaknesses are clearly ex-
posed. With an omniscient casuistry, the narrator offers alternative
contexts which would circumscribe the range of significances at-
tributable to Beatrice. From this omniscient vantage, the narrator
recognizes that Giovanni's capacity for allegorical literacy is severely
curtailed: he has 'not a deep heart' but 'a quick fancy and an ardent
southern temperament' (p. 105). Giovanni's first task must be to
order his own consciousness, to create of it an accurate, if subjec-
tive, index to truth. But it seems that Giovanni's chance to do so has
already passed.
In Giovanni's second encounter with Baglioni, the fever of doubt
induced in his spirit produces a change in his physical counten-
ance: 'he stared forth wildly from his inner world into the outer
one, and spoke like a man in a dream' (p. 106). Giovanni's divided
psyche has been inverted; now his 'strange fantasies' take priority
and assume the status of normality. His relation to the 'normal'
world of Baglioni is reduced to a bare process of naming, encap-
sulated in his staccato response to Baglioni's greeting. Vague fan-
tasies and insubstantial suspicions - these do assume a reality as
Giovanni reifies his own interpretative dilemma. He is dichotomized
into inner and outer 'worlds'. The agent of this division is poison,
described by the narrator as 'a wild offspring of love and horror'

(p. 105). This is the emotional correlative to Giovanni's dualistic
perception of Beatrice. He is caught in a conflict between appear-
ances and their potential for meaning, between Beatrice's beauty
and her unknown spirit, unable to find a semantic link between the
two. Except, that is, in terms of one common sign - poison - and
it is upon this interpretative basis that he vacillates between abso-
lutes. Purity and corruption: which is real? Giovanni assumes that
one of these signs must be real, the other a phantom: either physical
beauty manifests purity of spirit or else physical poison denotes a
demonic ontology. He anticipates a simple relationship of identity
in the sign.
What then is the nature of Giovanni's fever? Is it in fact hermen-
eutic? Perhaps we should consult a Platonic physician. In the Sym-
posium, Parisanias argues that 'the bad man is the common or vulgar
lover, who is in love with the body rather than the soul; he is not
constant because what he loves is not constant'.6 So the 'bad' lover
fails to perceive a signifying relationship between the signifier and
a transcendental signified, mistaking transitory temporal referents
as the sole signifieds. Giovanni too fails to elevate his sight; instead,
he constantly adjusts his view to suit the context provided by his
senses. According to the physician Eryximachus, this hermeneutic
myopia can be expressed symptomatically as disease. The precise
nature of Giovanni's fever is clarified in terms of another Platonic
metaphor of this evil and inconstant love. I refer to the Phaedrus, to
the concept of love as a divine madness - a conflict of spiritual and
sensuous forces - inspired by the reminiscence of divine beauty.
Giovanni's conflict appears to be of this kind: the 'continual warfare
in his breast' is a conflict of sensuality and a mystified intellect. His
fever, evoked by Beatrice - 'her rich beauty was a madness to him'
- is the symptom of tainted love.
Old Dame Lisabetta hints at the nature of this erotic contamina-
tion. Her vocation is never specified; she acts as concierge but, as
she 'smirked and smiled' at Giovanni, insinuating herself into his
attention, she performs the office of a classic procuress. With an air
of impropriety and sexual innuendo she informs Giovanni of a
private entrance to Rappaccini's garden. 'Many a young man in
Padua would give gold to be admitted among those flowers' (p. 108).
Giovanni is startled out of his 'cold and dull vacuity' by her words.
But again his suspicions are aroused and he wonders whether he is
prostituting himself to some intrigue of Rappaccini's devising. In
this fever of suspicion, which now gives him substance, Giovanni's

uncertainty whether Beatrice 'were angel or demon' is dismissed
by his sudden self-consciousness. His fever is dispelled now that
Beatrice's image has clarified as the 'mystery which he deemed the
riddle of his own existence' (p. 110).
This conception reverberates with Platonic connotations, though
it is also typical of the central problem posited by allegorical nar-
ratives. In order to solve the 'mystery' of Beatrice, Giovanni must
learn to read correctly, according to an accurate method of interpre-
tation. Accuracy here depends upon hermeneutic self-knowledge -
Giovanni must know himself and the function of his cognitive self
within the interpretative scheme if he is to discover the significance
of Beatrice within that scheme. Unfortunately, it appears that the
place of self-knowledge, in Giovanni's semiotic system, has been
assumed by the pervasive poison. It illuminates Giovanni's percep-
tual world; the 'oriental sunshine' of Beatrice's beauty forms only
a part of the mystery. Yet it is her beauty, as a type of the divine,
which seemingly holds the key to 'the riddle of his own existence'.
Not surprisingly, then, this first interview in Rappaccini's garden
concerns the truthfulness of verbal signs. Still, Giovanni reads in an
idealistic, literal manner, relying upon the testimony of his senses
despite Beatrice's warning:
[f Jorget whatever you may have fancied in regard to me. If true

to the outward senses, still it may be false in its essence. But the
words of Beatrice Rappaccini's lips are true from the depths of
the heart outward. Those you may believe! (p. 112).
Indeed, in terms of her beauty, Beatrice seems to represent an ideal

or symbolic referentiality, where form and substance are identical.
This is carried to the point where Giovanni imagines that her words
are steeped in her heart, enbalmed by her breath, so any referential
gap, indicative of semantic arbitrariness, would be obliterated.
Within this context, Giovanni's doubts disappear: he is relieved of
the burden of interpretation. But this is an obligation that no alle-
gorical protagonist can afford to abandon. And in effect Giovanni
does not. Beatrice simply confirms his idealistic hermeneutic: 'he
seemed to gaze through the beautiful girl's eyes into her trans-
parent soul' (p. 112). Here is a sign that he can understand; her
inscribed significance seems clear and he forgets that he ever con-
sidered her an enigma, 'idealized in such hues of terror' (p. 113).
Further, he views the garden through her eyes so it is no longer

suggestive of sinister intrigue. With this, however, he forgets the
distinction which must be preserved between the natural and the
artificial in Rappaccini's garden. Beatrice is akin to Shakespeare's
Miranda - a 'maiden of a lonely island' (p. 112) - in that her careful
nurture has allowed her 'transparent soul' to become visible.
A telling analogy is hinted at by the narrator, linking a reified
Beatrice to the 'immortal' fountain and the gemlike shrub. They are
suggestive of the Well of Life and the Tree of Knowledge, yet both
have been moulded by human art. Giovanni naively assumes that
they are natural; he persistently perceives only that which is obvi-
ous and resists any systematic quest for alternative meanings. The
close proximity of Beatrice, 'whom he felt his spirit knew with a
certainty beyond all other knowledge' (p. 116), aggravates Giovanni's
literal-mindedness. This 'immaculate perception' is an illusion which
obstructs his judgement by obscuring other accesses to knowledge.
Because he is unaware of the creative nature of his perception
Giovanni is particularly naive in his approach to artistic construc-
tions. He judges both the natural and the artificial in the same literal
manner, assuming that both forms manifest a simple relation of
identity in the sign.
Giovanni's search for knowledge is arrested at the level of ap-
pearance. In the Republic, Plato describes a dialectical progression
through four stages of cognition: imagining (eikasia), commonsense
belief (epistis), thinking (dianoia), and intelligence (episteme or noesis).
The object of knowledge changes as the mind 'ascends' from im-
ages to substantial things to abstract forms and finally to forms of
the Good which are known in their dependence upon the Good.
Plato posits a relationship of metonymic identity between ontology
and epistemology: that which 'gives to the objects of knowledge
their truth and to him who knows them his power of knowing, is
the Form or essential nature of Goodness'.7 So self and sign are of
identical ontologies: each is a part of the whole denoted by 'Good-
ness'. Giovanni, vacillating between the two lowest modes of cog-
nition - imagination and commonsense - discovers no metonymic
access to ontological certainty. Instead, like the prisoners of Socra-
tes's cave, he takes images to be reality and mistakes that which is
troped as metaphor for a sign of metonymic identity. His fever may
be symptomatic of this hermeneutic contamination. Giovanni as-
sumes that physical exteriority is an outward and visible sign of
interiority: though autonomous realms, the two are assumed to
be clearly and metonymically related. This assumption is itself

symptomatic of Giovanni's egocentric method of interpretation. His
dilemma is thus defined by the inability of either interiority or
exteriority, as cognitive categories, to reveal a pure, self-sufficient
essence, or indeed to meet in a singular relationship of identity.
Giovanni discovers in the place of congruence a contiguity that
contradicts his idealistic expectations. Ontology and epistemology
refuse segregation, but Giovanni lacks the self-awareness to recog-
nize his own cognitive confusions.
Thus he falls an easy prey to Baglioni's vengeful scheme. Baglioni's
Oriental fable corresponds directly to Giovanni's 'fancy'; his expec-
tation that an obvious one-to-one signifying relation will be discov-
ered between Beatrice's physical form and her spiritual nature is an
interpretative assumption specific to the classical allegorical form
of the fable.8 This fable appears 'true to the outward senses' but,
under the lingering influence of Beatrice's presence, Giovanni argues
that 'still it may be false in its essence' (p. 118). He tries to respond
with 'a true lover's perfect faith' yet he is unable to formulate this
knowledge in the absence of a tangible image or mode of represen-
tation. Under the pressure of Baglioni's pragmatic diagnosis of the
problem, Giovanni's cognitive weakness is definitively exposed.
From the perspective of the narrator, Beatrice has represented an
ideal form of referentiality, a synchronicity of image and meaning.
The narrator's progressive depreciation of Giovanni's interpretative
capacity corresponds to a valorization of Beatrice as an ideal 'sign'.
But Giovanni's allegiance to the things of the flesh requires that,
working inversely and from the assumption of physical corruption,
he seek a counterpart in her spirit.
As a Platonic lover, Giovanni's priorities are thus inverted: he
stumbles upon the first rung of the 'ladder of love'. I am referring
here to Socrates's account of Diotima's doctrine of love in the Sym-
posium; the doctrine popularized by Renaissance neo- or pseudo-
Platonists to an extent whereby it is now a cliche of literary history.
Diotima describes the ideal or philosophical lover as one who seeks
absolute beauty and 'contact not with a reflection but with the truth'.9
The lover moves through a process of ascent, the soul guided by
love,
from one instance of physical beauty to two and from two to all,
then from physical beauty to moral beauty and to the beauty of
knowledge, until from knowledge of various kinds one arrives at
the supreme knowledge whose sole object is that absolute beauty,

and knows, at last what absolute beauty is.10
Love exalts the soul; the perception of beauty and reminiscences of

its divine archetype foster the regrowth of the soul's wings and
facilitate the recuperation of a pure referentiality.
The successful ascent of the Platonic lover, compelled by an
amorous force to contemplate the ideal form of his love, seems far
removed from the experience of Hawthorne's allegorical hero. But
this Platonic pattern, articulated implicitly by the narrator, provides
the measure of Giovanni's epistemological, and amorous, failure.
Of course, this pattern also indicates an aesthetic and intellectual dis-
tance between the two texts. The shattered fountain in Rappaccini's
garden perhaps emblematizes the fracturing of this classical ideal.
Rather than adhere to a refined mental image of his beloved,
Giovanni is consumed with base thoughts. His 'ascent' from the
physical leads to a vacillation between speculative images of terror
and of celestial goodness: he is caught amid the 'many' which ob-
scure the 'One'. Even this minimal ascent is not motivated by Eros:
the 'necessary force' of Beatrice's virtue imposes itself upon him.
Consequently, the opposing force of Baglioni's pragmatism under-
mines what little knowledge of beauty Giovanni has, and so he
'falls'.
[H]is spirit was incapable of sustaining itself at the height to

which the early enthusiasm of passion had exalted it; he fell down,
grovelling among earthly doubts, and defiled therewith the pure
whiteness of Beatrice's image (p. 120).
Among the reasons for Giovanni's epistemological failure we must

count the possibility that his grasping for meaning may be mis-
directed. To term his search a quest seems hyperbolic; Giovanni is
acted upon rather than an actor in this hermeneutic drama. What
he does seek is a spiritual counterpart to Beatrice's physical corrup-
tion; what he does not investigate is the significance of her beauty
except as it contradicts her corruption. Beauty is no longer an ele-
vating power; it inspires vanity, egotism, pride, distrust and lust.
Giovanni seems impervious to these venomous qualities but he is
certainly not immune from them. As he stands before the mirror
admiring his own image, he is shocked to find himself the unin-
tended victim of his own 'test'.
Giovanni assumes that Beatrice's interior state must somehow be

equivalent to her poisonous exterior condition; what he finds is this
equivalence expressed by his own person. He now reifies what he
has taken to be Beatrice's dilemma. It is the narrator who interprets
Giovanni's contamination as a metaphor or reified image of the
distrust - born of egotism - which Giovanni uses, in the place of
faith, as a touchstone by which to judge his impressions and recol-
lections of Beatrice:
recollections which, had Giovanni known how to estimate them,

would have assured him that all this ugly mystery was but an
earthly illusion, and that, whatever mist of evil might seem to
have gathered over her, the real Beatrice was a heavenly angel
(p. 122).
The concept of recollection is central to Platonic philosophy: Soc-

rates, in the Phaedrus, describes love as the excitement produced by
beauty, beauty which bears the closest resemblance to the divine
idea because it appeals to sight, 'the clearest of our senses,... the
keenest mode of perception'.11 Beauty stimulates a nostalgic mo-
tivation for the quest for knowledge; beauty evokes reminiscences
of divine beauty and of the eternal world inhabited before birth.
Giovanni's self-love obfuscates his sight. Like Socrates's chariot-
eers, confused and 'baulked, every one, of the full vision of Being',
so Giovanni is left with only 'the food of semblance'.12 Giovanni
sees both a physical venom and the otherworldly beauty of Beatrice
but he understands these qualities literally, as discrete entities that
are mutually exclusive rather than interdependent. He struggles
with the conflicting signs, but finally resigns himself to the literal
'chaff and casts away the metaphoric 'wheat'.
The narrator, though omniscient, appears to acquire an increase
in understanding as Giovanni's capacity deteriorates. Modulation
of the rhetorical distance between Giovanni's tale and the telling of
it has provided a space for the evaluation of a quasi-Platonic epis-
temology. But in the denouement, this gap is reduced as the narra-
tor focuses his attention upon the ontology of the poison. Giovanni's
successive failures to read his 'symbolic language' have had posit-
ive implications for the narrator who has been reading this story in
an oppositional mode. By disclosing the meanings which Giovanni
has missed, the narrator is able to pronounce a final judgement
upon the epistemological failure we have witnessed. The narrator
perceives the radical difference between Giovanni's 'blighting words'

and Beatrice's 'Edenic speech'. He alone possesses an allegorical or
idealistic understanding of the semiotics of Rappaccini's garden. It
is the narrator who articulates a transcendental discourse, who trans-
forms omniscience into a pseudo-Platonic perspective. From this
privileged vantage, the relationship between figurative elements is
described in Platonic terms as metonymy: Giovanni is the image
of the failed lover, Beatrice the image of Goodness. The narrator
attempts to reduce aporia to paradox - the paradox of autonomous
but interdependent signs participating in an eternal but temporal
semiotic scheme and known by an absolute yet contingent referen-
tiality. The disjunction between this narratorial consciousness and
Giovanni's culminates in the irony of the narrative's conclusion.
Two levels of meaning - the literal and the figurative - are juxta-
posed in prophetic pronouncements such as:
'She must pass heavily, with that broken heart, across the borders
of Time - she must bathe her hurts in some fount of Paradise,
and forget her grief in the light of immortality - and there be well.
But Giovanni did not know it' (p. 126).
A similar disjunction reveals the irony of Giovanni's final choice. A

pharmaceutical solution to a physiological problem is Giovanni's
natural choice.
The intervention of Rappaccini heightens the irony. If this garden
is indeed 'the Eden of the present world' then Rappaccini is the
false deity. He has sought to create through his art a new Adam
and a new Eve. And the poison they share reifies this overvaulting
pride. The significance of the poison as the reified image of a ma-
lignant psychological force has been suggested by the narrator
throughout. It has signified Giovanni's lust, his egotism, and
Baglioni's vengeance: now, in reference to Rappaccini's hubris, these
poisons are revealed as potential types of Pride itself.
It is at the moment of death that Beatrice recognizes the nature
of the poison that has afflicted them both, as she asks Giovanni:
'was there not, from the first, more poison in thy nature than in
mine?' (p. 127). Baglioni provides the antiphonal, 'in a tone of tri-
umph mixed with horror' (p. 128) echoing the image of Giovanni's
love as a 'lurid intermixture of love and horror' and Rappaccini's
entire creation as a 'comixture' of vegetable species. Such alliances
produce metaphors, which only the narrator claims to read. The
ontology of the poison is thus revealed to be rhetorical. It is Beatrice -

Rappaccini's daughter - who apparently possesses a metaphysical
ontology, necessarily revealed through the duplicitous mode of
metaphor.
In the context of the narrative's play on systems of 'enlightenment'
(the moonshine of fancy, the daylight of rationality, the pure light
of truth) it is suggested that as she 'ascends' the 'Oriental sunshine'
of Beatrice's beauty, she may find a quasi-Platonic counterpart in
the 'light of immortality'. The narrator's mystical perspective may
be valued for such omniscience as is displayed here, but finally it
is marginalized: it is deconstructed in what becomes a tragic
denouement, as semantic indeterminacy and referential contagion
assert themselves more forcefully. The extended signification charac-
teristic of allegory here is limited in extent by Giovanni's failure to
interpret in these terms. Such a hermeneutic failure on the part of
the hero seriously undermines the capacity of the narrative to 'speak
of the Other'. The idealistic 'turn' towards the realm of pure Being
is arrested. Any metaphysical signification must be inferred, as that
which cannot be articulated. In the case of Rappaccini's poison, the
referentiality of the image is curtailed at the psychological level, in
a dimension of meaning where the spiritual and the physical are
inextricably confused. Access to any 'higher' or pure reference is
blocked by the incapacity of the protagonist to perceive it, the images
to offer it, and the narrative to authorize the recuperation of a pristine
referentiality.
It is as a result of his failure as an ideal lover that Giovanni's
story cannot generate the characteristic crisis of allegorical narrat-
ives. Diotima classifies love as a type of daemon, an intermediate
spirit that interprets and conveys messages between the gods and
men; love bridges the gap between them, and prevents the uni-
verse from falling into two separate halves'.13 So love, Platonically
defined, serves a symbolic function. But perverted messages, inter-
preted in literal terms, preclude the possibility that Giovanni will
achieve any epiphanic vision. So to return to one of the questions
with which I began: Giovanni does deny the potential significance of
Vertumnus's presence in Rappaccini's garden. There is no rebirth.
The reason why is further suggested by the narrative's intertextual
relationships.
Beatrice may be 'the poor offspring of man's ingenuity and of
thwarted nature', but the agent of her death is her Adam. Within
the context of the narrative's Edenic associations, the fountain is
likened to 'an immortal spirit', the Well of Life, and the jewel-like
shrub becomes analogous to the Tree of Knowledge. By imbibing
this poison, Giovanni partakes of this Tree but its effect is to trans-
form him into Adam and the serpent - both at once - to kill Beatrice
and to translate the garden from Eden into Hell. Rappaccini, as the
pseudo-deity presiding over his fallen Paradise, initiates this fatal
inversion. God permits Adam to name the creation in order to seek
a mate. So the biblical translation of creation into language occurs
within the context of the transcendent; the eventual naming of Eve
is a result of the Fall - she derives her name from the temporal,
from the mortal generations that inherit the consequences of her
transgression.14 Rappaccini attempts to isolate his 'new Eve' from
the realm of mortality, to redefine her identity in transcendent terms.
But he fails to read the network of implications which bind the
carnal to the sacred in the biblical text. Adam's linguistic knowl-
edge of creation is inseparable from the carnal knowledge which,
with God's prompting, he seeks. And indeed, the knowledge of
good and evil proves to be not the godlike knowledge promised by
the serpent but that knowledge which is the death of innocence and
the birth of shame. Giovanni is consumed by the carnal; yet he tries
to read literal, mortal, temporal signs as elements of a 'symbolic
language', as ideal forms incarnated in natural signs. Like Adam
and Eve (and Rappaccini), he creates an absolute distinction between
the two ontological realms and so, like Rappaccini, he witnesses the
violent reassertion of marginalized difference. Giovanni's failure to
perceive the metaphoric truth encoded in the shrub's blooms and
Beatrice's beauty bring death into the garden.
Rappaccini's Daughter establishes typological links not only with
the Bible but also with The Divine Comedy and Paradise Lost. Within
this structure of allusions, Giovanni acquires the significance of a
Satanic Adam, and Beatrice that of an innocent yet tempting Eve. It
is the recognition of her significance as a figure of divine grace, an
element within a transcendental design, that enables Dante to enter
Paradise, led by Beatrice from a physical to a supersensual reality.
Beatrice redeems the biblical Eve by leading Dante/Adam to salva-
tion; Dante as a type of the Christian soul repeats the actions of
Christ and so is redeemed as Christ redeemed humanity, through
the descent into Hell. Initially, though, Dante's mind is directed
towards God by Beatrice's guidance. He mistakes reflections for
reality until he fixes his eyes upon Beatrice who is, in turn, fixed
upon Heaven. Love, in The Divine Comedy, stimulates the desire to
know and, in the climactic beatific vision, knowledge and love, will
and desire, all are harmonized within the context of the transcendent.
Rappaccini's daughter, however, enacts the roles of both Beatrice
and Eve: through her beauty she appears to offer an access to the
absolute but her sexuality, which stimulates only a tainted love,
tempts Giovanni to 'fall'. He descends, never to arise. Giovanni sets
himself up as a redeeming antitype and becomes literally that - he
contradicts the redeeming type (Christ) by his wilful refusal to
confront the impure ontological nature of the human. Giovanni relies
upon Baglioni's antidote to lead his 'redeemed Beatrice' back 'within
the limits of ordinary nature'. His ignorant, unredeemed nature
and self-destructive narcissism are revealed in this ironic inversion
of the action of The Divine Comedy. Further, this negative typology
reveals the illusory claims to ontological certainty upon which con-
ventional typology is based. Typology assumes a metonymic con-
tinuity between historically disparate but essentially identical persons
and events as they are acted upon within a providential text. Typo-
logy assumes that autonomous ontological categories can be related
according to clearly defined principles: continuity is made to over-
ride difference. These assumptions are shown to be worse than
false by the deadly result of Giovanni's attempt to suppress differ-
ence through typology.
Although The Divine Comedy and the Bible are the most obvious
sources of typological reference, Rappaccini's Daughter draws upon
Paradise Lost as a significant biblical commentary. Milton's interpre-
tation of the Fall, like Hawthorne's, foregrounds Adam's sexual
motivation. He acquiesces to Eve's temptation because, 'if death /
Consort with thee [Eve], death is to me as life'.15 The sexual impli-
cations of 'consort' are realized when, in addition to death, lust or
carnal knowledge is revealed to be the most immediate consequence
of the Fall. Adam's fateful confusion of being and non-being is a
repetition of Eve's earlier error. Her belief in 'essence', in a univocal
identity, blinds her to the 'real' nature of the serpent. Eve assumes a
simple relationship of identity between interior and exterior; such a
rhetorical 'absent presence' as is the ontological nature of the serpent
under satanic possession is inconceivable to her. A similar blind-
ness to the impure ontology of all signs contributes to Giovanni's
fall, as does the desire for a degree of knowledge which surpasses
the capacity of human semiotics. Yet Giovanni acts upon the assump-
tion that he possesses absolute knowledge and the requisite capac-
ity to perceive incarnate idealities. In this respect he imitates Milton's
Satan; like Adam he is infatuated, but like Satan he is terrified by

Eve's 'celestial' beauty. It is Beatrice who makes the Adamic sacrifice:
Adam acquiesces in recognition of his kinship with Eve ('flesh of
my flesh'), Beatrice in recognition of their shared contagion. So
Beatrice 'ascends' alone. She maintains a distinction between the
eternal and temporal levels of meaning, contrasting 'these poisonous
flowers' with those that will henceforth surround her: 'the flowers
of Eden'. This reference to 'Eden' and not to 'the Eden of the present
world' is one of the ways in which the narrative suggests a closure
of the metaphoric gap between images and meaning that would
indicate their ontology. Like the opening reference to the Inferno,
Beatrice's biblical allusion confuses the diegetically real with that
which is real as a transcendental reality. Metaphysical significance
is suggested but is not available to narrative representation.
Above, I have given a reading of the psychological poison that
may seem to close the metaphoric play of the figure. But the nar-
rative resists such a final reading. It remains possible that the poison
may possess a metaphysical significance as the Ur-type of pride, or
it may not. The possibility is sustained by Rappaccini's usurpation
of the place of the creator and by his symbolic repetition of Satan's
fall. By remaining only a possibility, the disjunction between levels
of reference is sustained. The narrative lacks a self-defining referen-
tial centre which would ground its signs in a single authoritative
interpretation. In the absence of such a centre it is left to the reader
to impose an interpretative framework upon the image structure.
Throughout, the hermeneutic activity of the narrator has invited a
similar involvement from the reader; the story's ironic conclusion
demands that a readerly contract, to reduce this indeterminacy, be
signed. In this, the narrative is not departing from the practice of
allegorical discourse.
In the absence of a coherent and authoritative interpretative tradi-
tion, which would provide an index of sacred significances, Giovanni
is forced back upon his own hermeneutic resources. And he re-
sponds to this necessity in a characteristically Protestant, or even
Puritan, manner. The fundamental axioms of Protestant exegesis -
sola scriptura and solafides- guide his approach. He assumes that
the existential tableau set out before him must have a single, self-
defined meaning and that he will be able to discover this meaning
without the assistance of external agencies. However, belief is re-
quired in order to transform metaphors into the kind of mystical
metonymies that Giovanni anticipates. The Bible and Paradise Lost
portray Eve's sin as the failure of belief; The Divine Comedy reveals
the rewards of true faith - Rappaccini's Daughter provides a counter-
point to these texts by elaborating a radical indeterminacy of refer-
ence within the signs upon which faith is founded. Giovanni is an
outsider - a stranger to Padua, a solitary witness to the occurrences
in Rappaccini's garden for much of the narrative - he is a solitary
perceiver who, lacking a coherent referential structure with which
to regulate the hermeneutic potential of his 'symbolic language',
finds that all metaphors become metaphors of 'what?'. Baynard
Cowan, in his account of Romantic allegory, describes
what the interpretation of texts has become after the loss of a

coherent intellectual tradition. No longer the insertion of oneself
into a community of discourse that spans centuries, it is now a
solitary encounter that allows one's own emotional experiences
alone to be a privileged source of meaning.16
Suggested here is the kind of narcissistic myopia condemned by

Plato. Yet the unavailability of any external means of interpretative
legitimation necessarily shifts the hermeneute to the centre of the
referential structure. The reader of Rappaccini's Daughter is similarly
located by the narrative's refusal to ground its signs in a univocal
referentiality or to legitimate and valorize a single epistemological
mode: ontology and epistemology are inextricably confused for
protagonist and reader alike. In fact, the radical convergence of
Being and knowledge is the primary narrative strategy of such al-
legories as Hawthorne's.
Rappaccini's Daughter subverts or, rather, inverts the structure of
typological allegorical narratives. Contingency and semantic indeter-
minacy function to create the context of the entire narrative; only a
minimal revelation occurs in the denouement where allusion is used
to create the illusion (rather than mystifying presence) of meta-
physical significance. This inversion has always been a potential
form of allegorical discourse but it has come to the fore in the
Romantic and post-Romantic eras. Other narratives of this kind
would include Herman Melville's The Confidence-Man, Thomas
Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49 and Gravity's Rainbow, John Barth's
Giles Goat-Boy and, of course, Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter.17 In
each of these texts an extended metaphoric significance is implied
through counterpoint; the narrative foregrounds the failure of epis-
temology, a failure symptomatic of a corrupted image structure. A
dialectical procedure of reading positive implications from a series

of cognitive failures reveals, by implication, that the ontology of the
signs is such that they resist any extension of meaning - regardless
of their modes of referentiality. In the absence of a narrative con-
sciousness capable of perceiving and articulating a pure referential
structure, the referential relationship dissolves, leaving only its traces:
those fractured images which the narrative has sought to redeem.
The text is able to resolve this dilemma only when transcendental
significance is suggested by 'felt silences' evoked by that which
cannot be written.
So Rappaccini's Daughter violates the laws of typological allegor-
ical discourse in order to evoke and to deconstruct those very laws
which are the enabling conditions of the narrative. Hawthorne
establishes an intertextual framework of reference, only to dis-
appoint the semantic expectations he has created. And the self-
consciousness brought about by this absence makes obvious - in a
manner impossible within the diegesis - the illusory structure of
'otherworldly' levels of reference. The deconstruction of idealism
takes place within the diegesis and also within the structure of the
narrative. Giovanni's is a story of misguided hermeneutic allegiances
and the narrative itself is premised upon an inability to reveal a
final, totalizing reading except by recourse to misguided hermeneutic
allegiances. So the text 'deconstructs'. But far from silencing critical
debate, this deconstruction has sustained the realism/idealism con-
troversy for more than a century. Hawthorne uses realism to define
the limits of idealism and idealism to undermine the claims of re-
alism; but the assumptions of each are maintained by their contra-
dictory relations within the narrative. Further, this debate has been
sustained by the nature of its leading question: what style of dis-
course characterizes Hawthorne's narratives? To ask how various
discourses are engaged by the narrative is to recognize that, in
Rappaccini's Daughter, pragmatism and idealism are assessed as
epistemological accesses to 'deep' meanings. Giovanni discovers
that as ontological categories the real and the ideal are confused to
such a point as to preclude the possibility of defining essences and
absolute differences. These exist only in language, but in language
they are never absolute. In this way, Rappaccini's Daughter - like all
post-Romantic allegorical narratives - renews the primal fracture at
its source. The semantic, epistemological and ontological negation
figured by Beatrice's death is displaced into the renewal of allegorical
nostalgia: the narrative impulse of the genre.
6
The Fate of Allegory in
the Twentieth Century
Recent theorizing about allegory has, inevitably, taken account of
the Romantic legacy of symbolism and its accompanying aesthetic
and epistemological assumptions. What we have seen in twentieth-
century approaches to allegory is a reversal of the Romantic dis-
missal of the allegorical genre as lacking authenticity and mystical
power. In the work of theorists like Edwin Honig, Angus Fletcher,
Gay Clifford, Northrop Frye, Jonathan Culler, Paul de Man and
others allegory is situated within a continuum of literary practice.
At one end of this spectrum allegory is situated; at the other end we
have, variously, verisimilitude or narrative realism (to which alle-
gory is opposed), or symbolism (to which allegory is also opposed)
or mythical narratives (to which allegory is assumed to present
a significant comparison). Generally, then, in twentieth-century
descriptions allegory is not treated as a narrative genre but rather
as a style of writing, or 'symbolic mode', in Angus Fletcher's term.
The narrative nature of allegory is obscured in favour of a critical
emphasis upon the figurative and rhetorical aspects of allegorical
texts. A departure from this tendency to devalue the narrative struc-
ture of allegory is represented by poststructuralist analyses of the
genre. Poststructuralism or deconstruction follows a fairly con-
ventional opposition between allegory and symbolism but now it
is symbolism which suffers as a result of the contrast. Poststruc-
turalist critics such as Paul de Man praise allegory for its 'demysti-
fication' of the transcendental logic of symbolism. Where symbolism
purports to transcend the mundane by unifying subject and object
within its discursive field, allegory exposes the rhetorical man-
oeuvres necessary to accomplish this figurative sleight of hand. The
narrative critique of the dependence upon faith revealed by typo-
logy is matched, in poststructuralist accounts, by a rhetorical analy-
sis of allegory's intertextual construction of mystical presence.
Modern allegory, with its scepticism towards faith and its reliance
upon the notion of subjectivity, exemplifies many aspects of the
122
The Fate of Allegory in the Twentieth Century 123
poststructuralist rhetorical model. In what follows, I offer a survey

of influential twentieth-century theories of modern allegory.
Many theorists have found that a profitable place from which to
begin to describe modern allegory is in terms of its relationship
with earlier, classical and typological forms of allegory. These forms
have tended to dictate the general conception of what allegory is
and what it does, and it is this conception which is challenged by
the assumptions of modern allegory. Within these terms, modern
allegory is seen to retain the formal methods of earlier allegory - so
that it reveals a structure which is recognizably allegorical - while
inverting the kind of ideological structure which informs the nar-
rative. Allegory is often thought of purely as a mode which, in
the classical style, subordinates the formal features of the text to
preconceived intellectual structures and a didactic purpose; so it is
subject to transformation as these intellectual structures change, and
particularly as ideas about the nature of reality and literature's
relation to it are reformulated. Consequently, the attitude which
modern allegory reveals towards the relationship between the literal
surface of the narrative and its conceptual dimensions is different
to that assumed by earlier allegorists, but the way in which mean-
ing is generated by the text remains basically the same.
Allegorical narratives make a demand to be read both 'vertically'
and 'horizontally'. That is, allegorical images require definition in
terms of their place within the larger symbolic structure and with
reference to their implied relations with cultural structures which
exist outside the text. As Northrop Frye argues in Anatomy of Cri-
ticism, this is the process of interpretation generally applied to all
literary texts, but what distinguishes allegory is that the relation-
ship between the imagistic structure and systems of external refer-
ents is indicated by the text itself. The allegorist indicates how a
commentary on the text should proceed by suggesting an appro-
priate external structure of events or ideas through the image struc-
ture of the text. Frye sees in this a reason for allegory's critical
unpopularity: it restricts the freedom of the critic by dictating inter-
pretative activity. Because the text contains its own strongest possible
reading it withholds the authority needed by the critic who would
impose meaning upon it. However, while allegory does attempt to
control the interpretative process, it does not do so in explicit ways.
Allegory assumes that it is dealing with the kinds of issues which
resist expression in other forms and which resist simple statement
or definition. The kinds of value explored in allegorical narratives
are defined culturally as apprehensible but not definable, existing

in terms of relationships and processes rather than as static entities.
The allegorical text is able to suggest these absolutes by controlling
the interpretative process in such a way as to make them represent-
able. Allegory treats interpretation primarily as a strategy, exercising
the reader's capacity to perceive subtle gradations of value and
elusive abstractions which are at work in ordinary experience but
are not easy to see. Typological allegory, especially, aims to enlighten
its reader and to influence subsequent action yet ultimately the
reader is made aware of being in control of the reading experience,
of having a personal responsibility for the meaning derived from
the text, because all the details of the narrative will not cohere until
their relationship to the production of allegorical meaning is grasped.
The pre-Romantic narrative is constructed so that generalized
statements about reality and ideality are gradually and persuasively
revealed; allegory remains foremost a narrative genre dealing with
processes as well as systems. Cumulative patterns of associations
are established cross-textually through images which both reveal
the local significance of the protagonist's experiences and contrib-
ute to the development of the larger significances of the whole.
Images are used to suggest the essential qualities of a concept, but
the figurative meaning of an object is limited by its context within
the narrative. An allegorical image characteristically establishes a
multivalent relationship to reality so that, as its meaning is dev-
eloped in the narrative, it is seen to refer to several spheres of
experience. Allegory often uses images with culturally determined
figurative meanings which are derived from literary or theological
tradition, history or philosophy, and which, because of their acces-
sibility for sophisticated readers, help the reader to form codified
sets of associations between images and to perceive connections
between dramatic relationships and imagery, ideas and abstractions.
However, an allegorical image cannot suggest so many meanings
that narrative coherence is destroyed; all the devices used in an
allegorical narrative are informed by the necessity that the reader
perceive an overall intention operating with respect to the work.
Meaning must refer back to the dominant purpose by contributing
to the development either of the narrative or of the system of values
being explored. The narrative structure and imagery attempt to
express both the particular and the general simultaneously by es-
tablishing in the action a hierarchy of values which gives meaning
and purpose to the experiences represented.
Throughout the narrative these values are defined and elabor-

ated in a series of multivalent images which continually refer to,
and eventually reveal, a central core of meaning. This is more a
focus of meanings than a single meaning; it is the ideological centre
of the text which provides unity for all the narrative elements: it
reflects the metaphysical order which is perceived in the cosmos
and analyzed in the text. Because transcendental forms of order are
not easily perceived operating in and structuring the world, the
typological text unties the elements and relationships which consti-
tute such a system and in the process of the narrative reunifies them.
Edwin Honig, in his study Dark Conceit: The Making of Allegory,
explores the relationship between an ideal reality such as this and
the fictional method of allegory, in the attempt to define the cultural
elements which determine the existence of allegory. He draws a
parallel between allegory and myth, arguing that both forms express
and analyze dominant religious and cultural ideals which fulfill
actual social and psychological needs. The appeal of myth lies in
the fact that it formulates answers to fundamental human hopes
and fears, a function which is later fulfilled by the symbolic formu-
lations of the ideal in art. Allegory constructs a hypothetical fictional
reality which is centred upon, and determined by, the ideal. Within
the narrative, the local and general significances of any event are
judged in terms of this ideal which is thus tested and proved; the
imitation of life on the literal level of narrative coexists with an
evaluative principle which gives meaning and purpose to that life.
Edwin Honig, like Angus Fletcher, presents the narrative forms
that allegory characteristically takes as the journey or quest, the
debate and the battle - all forms over which the allegorist can exert
a high degree of control. The direction in which the narrative moves
is determined both internally, according to the personal objectives
of the characters, and externally, by the didactic purpose of the
writer. In Honig's terms, this means the establishment of a system
of values that are shown to reconcile the real and the ideal worlds,
to integrate individual and cultural awareness by analyzing and
defining contemporary problems of religious and philosophical
belief, within the context of a transcendent ideal. In the terms of
Honig's model of allegory this is achieved largely through the agency
of the hero and the use of imagery. Honig defines allegory as both
a hypothetical construct, a fictional reality, and a peculiar way of
thinking that is revealed in both myth and literature. Consequently,
he sees the allegorical image as signifying an object and the essential
quality of that object, an event and a way of perceiving it which is

based upon the belief in divine purpose. The allegorical image is
involved simultaneously in the literal level of narrative and in the
anagogic level of meaning. Meaning is derived from the develop-
ment and association of images which endow dramatic relation-
ships with significant dimensions by extending their identities and
containing as many referents as the dominant ideal will permit.
Patterns of symbolic imagery and of relationships established by
the hero are linked by Honig in allegory's use of the dream artifice.
The dream is both generic and individual; interpretation begins by
analyzing it in individual terms and develops from these more
abstract, universal categories. Honig sees in this and in the psychic
sources of the dream a parallel with myth and allegory. But the
narrative form which he designates as essentially allegorical is only
one of a number of characteristic forms which an allegory can take.
The 'dream artifice' or dream-vision is a variation of the journey or
quest form. However, in terms of the hero's experience, the dream
conventions can define the figurative nature of his quest, allowing
moral and ethical entities to assume an individual existence and, in
interacting with the hero, to keep before him the sense of realizable
purpose, so sustaining throughout the narrative his relation to the
final goal. In an allegorical text the hero often presents a human yet
fictional example of the practice of a given concept or series of
related ideas. An allegorical hero characteristically represents a
relatively complex theological or philosophical point of view but
even a personified abstraction does not merely embody a given
notion. Rather, in Honig's account, personifications demonstrate
abstract qualities as states or conditions of consciousness, defined
by actions which correspond to elements in human experience.
A virtue or ideal needs to be threatened or tempted if it is to be
dramatized. Because it cannot change in essence, as a concept it is
static but it can be shown in several manifestations or in a sequence
of confrontations which provide a cumulative understanding of that
quality and testing of its validity as an ideal in human terms. An
allegorical figure exists simultaneously in human terms, conceptual
terms, and in aesthetic terms as a character in a fictional text. A com-
plex allegory does not present just patterns of abstract meaning.
Allegory is informed by a structure of ideas but only homiletical
allegory, not sophisticated narrative allegory, consists of a number
of ideas loosely disguised in literary form.
The experience of the pre-Romantic allegorical hero is both human
and ideational, it is typical in that it is formulated in terms of gen-

eralized statements about the nature of experience and the organ-
ization of reality. Honig, however, describes his conception of the
allegorical hero in explicitly mythic terms, as an 'exponent of cul-
tural experience' who generally faces a 'labyrinthine pattern of action
which is archetypal'.1 His heroic quality derives from the way his
quest is sanctioned socially and from the significance of his actions:
the growing awareness of purpose which is his self-realization. His
typicality is often indicated by 'talismanic' objects which he carries
or wears, so that his meaning or purpose is suggested to the reader
from the outset. The hero's development in self-awareness is often
facilitated by the advice he is given by his guide or mentor or from
another character observing the action. Allegorical heroes are offered
commentary to help them to confront experiences for which they
would otherwise be unprepared. Because of the episodic structure
of the allegorical narrative, the processes of testing an abstract con-
cept are potentially unlimited; consequently, the hero has unlimited
opportunities to explore systems of meaning and value, and the
allegorist is able to offer an analysis of the narrative as it proceeds.
The kinds of commentary which the hero receives during the course
of the action are therefore crucial to the integration of the fiction
and its significance.
Characteristically, the pre-Romantic hero is transformed by his
experiences in the action: his moral being is modified by testing.
The way in which this change occurs is significant because its moral
cause is located in the hierarchy of value which informs all aspects
of the narrative. Often it is related to the concept of correct evalu-
ation, the ability to read the world correctly, which is reflected in
the transformation of the objects perceived. For allegory's concern
with interpretation is not restricted to the incorporation of com-
mentary into the narrative; all allegories treat the idea of inter-
pretation thematically. In fact, the didactic aim of some allegorical
narratives can be seen as part of the attempt to persuade the reader
of the moral and ethical value of interpretation, of reading the world
correctly in both its literal and its spiritual dimensions, by demon-
strating how this may lead to the perception of an ideal unity and
order. Honig calls the ideal reality which is finally revealed by the
text its 'anagogue': it signifies the ultimate purpose of all events
encompassed by the text. As the final end towards which the entire
action leads, the anagogue validates the figurative structure which
establishes the relation between the text and contemporary actuality.
The anagogue incorporates and reconciles the real, ideal and fictional
worlds.
Honig discusses modern allegory in terms of the breakdown of
the Christian cosmic hierarchy and systems of analogy which support
the functioning of the 'anagogue' in allegorical texts. Taking the
term 'anagogue' as he does from the patristic concept of a fourfold
scheme of meaning, Honig describes the modern form of allegory
as lacking any anagogic dimension of meaning. That is, the modern
allegorical text resists the interpretation of its events and images in
terms of a divine intention. The attempt to define and elaborate a
system of values through patterns of multivalent images does not
lead to the discovery of a central core of meaning within the text;
systems of order are analyzed and deconstructed but the narrative
is finally incapable of reunifying its constituent elements into a tran-
scendent ideal order. Instead, the modern allegorical image reveals
in every event of the narrative the rupture which exists between
a world of order, truth and reality and the perceived world of ap-
pearance, chance and deception. There is no metaphysical ideal
available to create a reconciliation between the real and the ideal,
and no imagery to express such a union. Honig blames the Romantic
aesthetic for undermining the ontological base of symbolism, for
destroying the objective character of the symbol and replacing it
with what he calls 'the personal fetish of the artist'.2 The post-
Romantic image represents subjective personal ideals and desires
rather than some consensual reality. Pre-Romantic allegory has rec-
ognized the arbitrary nature of its images by using them not as
'natural symbols', which by their very nature both represent and
manifest a greater reality, but as conventional signs having culturally
designated meanings which are modified by the narrative context
of the individual work. Such allegories are written to be interpreted
by readers who can perceive connections between patterns of images
and their meanings outside the text. The work aids this interpreta-
tive process by employing images which have long and powerful
associations with specific cultural referents. Earlier forms of allegory
have particularly strong links with values and beliefs which exist
independently of the text, the reader and the writer. In the actions
and experiences which it represents and the images it uses the pre-
Romantic text analyzes and tests the validity of systems of belief
which are assumed to exist in the world. This is a form of what Gay
Clifford, in her book The Transformations of Allegory, calls 'exploratory
didacticism'.3 The experiences of the allegorical hero have a public
significance but in terms of modern or post-Romantic allegory

meaning and value are only personally significant.
Modern allegory is sceptical about the notion that value and
meaning can exist outside of individual perception and judgement.
There is no core of meaning in the modern allegorical text, no cen-
tre of moral continuity. The systems which are explored reveal a
structure akin to that of the labyrinth rather than that of an ordered
world. Yet Honig is not accurate when he attributes such changes
in the conceptual dimensions of allegory to the erosion of a 'rigid
base of cultural authority'.4 Modern allegory, like its predecessors,
relies on a consensus of belief or a series of cultural commonplaces
which do exist in the world. But these external referents do not estab-
lish an authority by which the reader can evaluate the narrative
events; allusions to various cultural disciplines do not function to
show the place of such endeavours within a transcendent pattern of
order. Rather, they are used to reflect the fact of the hero's neces-
sarily partial and subjective knowledge of the world that he confronts
and the fragmentation of his relationship to it.
The modern allegorical method, as it is formulated by Franz Kafka
- a writer whose work contributes significantly to theoretical ac-
counts of modern American allegory - focuses upon the attempts of
the individual to participate in systems of order, to establish a sense
of place in the world. In The Castle, the hero K suffers from the
delusion that an absolute reality exists independently of his con-
sciousness and this delusion prevents any realization that it is on
his own terms that he must confront the world. Consequently, he
never makes any progress in his quest. The bureaucracy of the
Castle seems defined and limited but the significance of the action
is constantly shifting, eluding definition in terms of absolute value.
K focuses upon external aspects of his environment. His profession
is indicative of his superficiality - he is a land surveyor, one who
measures surfaces - and the causes of things elude him because he
never looks to himself. Personal characteristics prevent him from
achieving his goal: pride, arrogance, ignorance of abstract things.
He struggles against external forces without realizing that he him-
self is the enemy. K is drawn to the Castle for reasons he cannot
articulate; he is particularly attracted to the Castle tower which is
situated between heaven and earth. But its reflected light appears
to K as a sign of madness rather than of any spiritual enlighten-
ment. He translates the image into human terms and so ignores any
deeper meaning it might contain. The Castle informs every aspect
of the narrative: the characters, their relationships and their conver-

sations. Olga's report of the Castle offices suggests that it takes the
form of a labyrinth with an inaccessible central chamber. The road
through the village forms a circle around the Castle, but K's attempts
to advance towards the centre are frustrated and he learns very
little about the intermediate region. In his attempts to gain informa-
tion about the Castle, K continually finds himself presented with a
self-image. The notion of the guide is retained from earlier forms of
allegory but because the modern hero perceives a unique version of
reality, any advice he is given confuses rather than clarifies his
experience; only K can assign meaning and value in a valid way.
Among all the characters who offer K advice, only Amalia stands
as a concrete example to him. The ineffability of her secret identifies
her with the mystery of the Castle. She does not conquer the Castle
but she knows because she herself has seen, yet she is able to tran-
scend despair and survive. But K cannot see his image in her 'cold,
hard eye' and so cannot make use of her example. He does have a
moment of self-realization when he sees his dilemma in terms of
the freedom of the outcast, a freedom beyond human contacts. But
liberty and invulnerability are terms without meaning for K when
he is deprived of collective human values by which he can measure
them. K's wandering in the labyrinth reveals an incessant longing
for certainty but the Castle towards which he quests manifests a
profound uncertainty about absolutes and ultimate destinies.
Angus Fletcher, in his book Allegory: The Theory of a Symbolic
Mode, sees the predicament of the hero in terms of his encounter
with systems of authority and collective value. In fact, Fletcher's
model of allegory is based on his notions about the way allegory
seeks to assert its authority over the interpretative process and the
manner in which it treats thematically the concept of authority. He
distinguishes modern from earlier forms of allegory by focusing
upon the modern exaggeration of the influence of social systems
upon individuals. For the modern hero, Fletcher claims,
hierarchy itself causes fear, hatred, tentative approach and re-

treat. A sense of place is gone, along with the hero's identification
with governing political or cultural ideals. Doubt inhibits action;
piety of any kind is difficult or impossible.5
Within the narrative, he sees imagery as the element which most

fully conveys this condition. Fletcher uses the term 'Kosmos', which
he derives from classical rhetoric, to describe allegorical imagery.

The image simultaneously signifies the universe, a hierarchy within
it, and a status within that hierarchy. The image has considerable
emotive power, in particular because of its relation to positions of
status. Fletcher claims that through the use of imagery which either
praises or blames, allegory pressures the reader into an acceptance
of the hierarchies favoured by the narrative. The image is capable
of referring to levels in all natural and spiritual orders, and conse-
quently it can encompass the entire cosmos. Pre-Romantic alleg-
ories express the whole of the hierarchies they represent by using
imagery to work upwards through the system, finally to reveal a
governing authority at the top of the figurative 'ladder'. In modern
allegory, however, imagery expresses the increasingly restricted areas
of action in which the hero moves; it tends towards an ironic tone
and reveals a limited point of view. Therefore, Fletcher does not
accept the notion that a breakdown in the ontological base of sym-
bolism is revealed in modern allegory. He argues that modern
imagery serves to dispraise; it expresses anxiety and ambivalence
about hierarchical structures. But he also argues that the allegorical
image, generally, often expresses a degree of calculated obscurity
which is intended to elicit an interpretative response from the reader
and which also reveals the kind of ambivalence that Fletcher sees
as endemic to allegory. In contrast to myth, he argues, allegory
cannot accept doubt or irrationality but must displace it by creating
dichotomies, by organizing its characters and images in terms of a
thematic opposition of absolutes.
The intention of allegory is to establish clearly rationalized levels
of meaning within the narrative, not to reveal some ultimate paradox,
according to Fletcher. However, allegory also expresses doubt and
emotional ambivalence towards rigid sets of polarities. Consequently,
allegory is cast in a ritual form which, through its repetition and
symmetry, relieves tension and ambivalence. Ritualistic necessity is
the principle which governs the organization of the plot, in contrast
to the mimetic principle of probability which governs the plot of a
realistic novel; ritual clarifies the action by creating the impression
of formula but in so doing devitalizes the plot. The events of the
narrative are structured in imitation of ideas and theories which are
most fully expressed in the nature of the allegorical hero. Fletcher
sees the hero as a device which gives to abstract conceptions only
the semblance of personality and so behaves as if possessed by
a 'daemon'. He defines the hero in terms of a real person with a
one-track mind: who tends to compartmentalize complex ideas yet

is obsessed with a single notion, who bases his life on rigid habits,
who is not in control of his own destiny but is controlled by a force
existing outside his own ego, who arbitrates order over chaos by
imposing his fate upon events and people. Although throughout
his book Fletcher insists upon a clear distinction between allegory
and mimesis, he analyzes the allegorical hero in terms of a character
in a mimetic fiction and in terms of personal psychology, ignoring
the fact that the hero is 'possessed', if by anyone, then by the alleg-
orist who is using an ideological form in which the conceptual
dimensions of his characters take precedence over the subtleties of
character portrayal. But Fletcher is developing a parallel between
allegory as a fictional method and what he terms 'essential patterns
of behaviour' which are authoritarian, particularly the behaviour of
the obsessive neurotic. Following Freud's analogy, Fletcher aligns
allegory with religious behaviour in the compulsive syndrome. He
justifies his use of this parallel by claiming that, seen in terms of it,
allegory's function is the reordering of major aspects of our psychic
lives.
Fletcher's argument here does not apply specifically to modern
allegory. Although he finds a psychoanalytical counterpart to every
formal allegorical element that he isolates, his definition of those ele-
ments is highly questionable. The hero is not necessarily 'daemonaic'
nor is allegorical causation necessarily magical, as he argues. The
definition of thematic ambivalence that Fletcher presents applies
equally to irony and in fact he admits that allegory differs from
irony only in the degree of emotional ambivalence it expresses. He
begins his discussion of the 'allegorical mode' with a definition which
relates it to myth; he defines it as the 'human reconstitution of
divinely inspired messages, a revealed transcendental language
which tries to preserve the remoteness of a properly veiled god-
head'.6 Later, he suggests that myth and allegory may be two stages
in a single archetypal story-telling process, where myth expresses
an ideal reality which is to be comprehended in a single vision and
allegory represents the subsequent rationalization of it in terms of
philosophical, psychological or theological terms, thus deconstruc-
ting the unified experience into clearly defined levels of meaning
and destroying metaphysical unity. It is possible to speculate about
common psychological or historical sources of myth and allegory
but as a literary form allegory differs significantly from myth which,
in Fletcher's terms, exists as a ritual form. As Gay Clifford argues,
allegory subordinates myth to its own purposes, it draws upon

classical, biblical and primitive myths as part of its general cultural
allusiveness or intertextuality. The interpretation of the allegorical
text is aided by narrative associations with previous treatments of
similar concerns which also generalize the meaning of the text.
Furthermore, allegory is a consciously invented form and the ac-
tions of allegorical characters can only be imaginatively true. In
contrast, the characters of a myth are assumed to have an objective
historical existence. The myth itself is taken to be divinely true and
so must be unconscious of any artifice. Fletcher establishes a relation
between the two and valorizes myth at the expense of allegory. He
objects in particular to what he sees as allegory's authoritative con-
trol of the interpretative process, pointing to 'poetic justice' as a
'calculated, moralistic violation of natural probabilities'.7 Again, he
is using mimesis as a criterion for evaluating allegory. When he
identifies a running commentary or 'moral' at the end of the alleg-
orical narrative which explicitly indicates the secondary meaning
conveyed, Fletcher is confusing the classical form of allegory (which
Northrop Frye restricts to the pedagogical sphere, describing
metonymic classical allegory, based upon metonymy, as an educa-
tional tool) with the allegorical genre itself. Consequently, he is led
to claim that the meaning of an allegorical narrative can be identi-
fied by anyone who possesses the skills of a decoder. He goes on
to assert that an allegorical narrative is necessarily a 'constricted'
text which attempts to impose its own constrictions on the reader.
Fletcher concludes that the predominant effect of reading allegory
is 'anaesthesia'.
All allegory, and modern allegory in particular, is aware of the
complexities and problems associated with the activity of interpre-
tation. Pre-Romantic allegory justifies its demand for interpretative
effort by invoking its moral purpose: it claims to deal with interpre-
tation as a morally, ethically and spiritually valuable activity which
may lead to an awareness of a metaphysical order operating in the
perceived world. The structures of belief and value with which
allegory is concerned are qualities perceptible in an interpreted
world. The modern allegorist does not have the justification lent
by such a purpose since this depends upon the assumed existence
of generally apprehensible systems of value. In the wake of Roman-
ticism, modern allegory assumes that value is dependent upon
subjective, personal evaluation and that interpretations of meaning
are valid only in terms of the individual. The modern allegorical
narrative is not informed by a hierarchy of value by means of which

the particular and general significances of any situation can be
measured. The effect of this for the allegorical hero is to make
authority appear threatening and frustrating because it is obscure.
Because structures of significance are not implied within the narrat-
ive or, if they are, they are presented in a very oblique manner, the
interpretative process becomes correspondingly complex for the hero
and the reader alike. The meanings of modern allegory are suggested
rather than stated by the connotative complexity of the literal nar-
rative. Because the relation between narrative and meaning is not
based upon similitude but rather upon accumulating patterns of
significance which elicit multiple interpretations, in the absence of
any encompassing absolute, modern allegorical narratives do not
terminate the interpretative process but end inconclusively.
Perhaps the single most cited text, discussed by all seminal ac-
counts of twentieth-century allegorical narratives, particularly in
relation to this oblique and threatening aspect of modern allegory
is Franz Kafka's Metamorphosis. Because of the importance accorded
Kafka in recent theoretical work on allegory and because of Kafka's
influence upon American writers of allegory, Metamorphosis is dis-
cussed here at some length. In this narrative, the reasons for Gregor's
transformation into an insect are never stated: when a hierarchy of
value is absent, so too is the concept of moral causality. Yet it is a
concept upon which Kafka plays throughout the narrative. The text
will support a number of interpreted reasons but will not prove
any of them. The story divides into three parts: those dealing with
Gregor's relation to his profession, his family and, finally, to him-
self. The effects of the transformation are revealed by the internal,
psychological effects it has on the 'hero', through the insect's inter-
action with his human opponents. Gregor Samsa wakes one morn-
ing from 'uneasy dreams' and, in the attempt to leave his bed,
discovers that his body has been transformed into that of an insect.
He sees that he has been transformed but he does not know it.
Gregor is able to verbalize and conceptualize as a human but this
forms a bizarre, comic barrier to his ability to realize that he has
actually become a bug.
Gregor lies in bed, unable to leave it because he cannot yet coor-
dinate his strange body, worrying that he has overslept and may
lose his job as a result. The narrative suggests that, in an uncon-
scious attempt to escape his mundane but strict job, Gregor may
have been transformed in his dreams. So his metamorphosis is to
be explained as an escapist dream come true. We are told that he

has been recently promoted, from warehouse worker to travelling
salesman, a step which brings him closer to the time when, having
paid his parents' debts, he will be free of his job. But Gregor shrinks
from such progress; he wants both success and independence but
avoids approaching his goals. Gregor's professional life therefore
places him in what one commentator has termed, 'a self-imposed
labyrinth'.8 He is unable to break with the law that determines his
existence and so pleads with the Chief Clerk to be retained in his
job. It is only after his appearance has scared the clerk away from
the house - when he realizes that his family can no longer under-
stand his speech or even bear to look at him - that Gregor finally
knows that his transformation is real. In this, and in his relationship
with his employer, Gregor demonstrates his weakness and inse-
curity, his lack of a concrete sense of identity. He is left alone with
his family and, in their attempts to adjust to his altered condition,
reveals the absurdity of their reactions. Honig sees the allegorical
narrative focusing upon the way in which members of the family
gradually withdraw their sympathy and support, revealing how
fragile and arbitrary Gregor's identity is, how dependent upon others
he is for a sense of self. The narrative shows how, in the absence
of external determinants, Gregor's personality dissolves. His sister
Grete becomes the authority in all matters concerning Gregor's
welfare and it is she who decides on the plan of removing the furn-
iture from his room. Gregor objects to this, seeing in his room and
its familiar objects the last remnants of his identity. Initially, however,
he accommodates himself to her wishes, allowing her to arbitrate
his desires and interests. Only later does he decide to resist and so
precipitates the final confrontation with his father.
In this confrontation Gregor is pelted with apples, an image that
suggests guilt and sin, and refers the action to a vague religious
context which does not clarify but instead renders the meaning of
the image more imprecise. Until his death, Gregor carries a rotting
apple embedded in his back, the symbol of his ambiguous guilt.
Thus, he is released from the last social contract; Honig argues that
in his alienated condition Gregor is able to understand the human
condition as he represents it and is able to come to terms with his
own 'inarticulate yearnings'.9 Gay Clifford also interprets the dual-
ity which is established in Gregor's consciousness - his human
capacity to conceptualize and his beetle-like emotions - as a meta-
phor of the human condition, of the enslaved soul. Certainly, Gregor
is presented with the opportunity to understand his own human

failure, to develop through the extremity of his suffering deeper
humanity than he had before, but his attempts at introspection are
blocked by feelings of resentment and plans for revenge. His
thoughts become more superficial as he becomes more fully a bug.
The last time he faces his family Grete is playing the violin. The
music seems to him to point to 'the unknown nourishment he
craved'; so his metamorphosis may be explained in terms of the
change needed to produce in him such a yearning for the unknown.
But Gregor himself translates the music, the ineffable, into images
of possession: he decides that he will hold his sister hostage. Again,
the question of guilt arises: he may have been transformed because
of his possessiveness, his habit of measuring value in terms of cash
or his inability to reach beyond himself towards the ineffable. The
narrative also suggests that his transformation may be punishment
for incestuous feelings towards his sister, or even his mother who,
during the course of the story is referred to only as Mrs Samsa: in
Gregor's terms she becomes her husband's wife as Grete becomes
her father's daughter. These explanations all are possible; reasons
and meanings are suggested by the narrative but are not reconciled
within a larger perspective. Gregor is condemned without accusa-
tion or judgement and, in the absence of an effective hierarchy of
value, final reasons cannot be reached. Consequently, the narrative
may be interpreted as the invasion of the world of empirical experi-
ence by a power that exists beyond it. The essential quality of this
force which causes the metamorphosis is its incomprehensibility in
empirical terms. Within the narrative it can be represented only by
not being depicted at all. The images and events of the narrative
refer ambiguously to psychological and religious structures outside
the text, hinting at a definitive meaning, but they remain suscept-
ible to any number of interpretations.
Modern allegorical texts, such as Kafka's, do not 'close' the nar-
rative at a stage of interpretation which might be called definitive.
They require a method of interpretation which is similar to that
demanded by earlier allegories but they curtail the referential func-
tion of the narrative. In doing this they foreground the interpretative
procedure, causing the reader to be aware of, and to make some
judgement about, methods of producing meaning. Maureen Quil-
ligan, in her essay 'Allegory, Allegoresis, and the De-allegorization
of Language' and in her monograph The Language of Allegory: Defin-
ing the Genre, argues the case that this is a characteristic function of
all allegory.10 By focusing upon its verbal surface rather than the
action represented, she argues, allegory controls the reader's recog-
nition of the textuality of the work rather than its verisimilitude.
But pre-Romantic allegory aims at creating an effect of conceptual
verisimilitude: concepts and structures of ideas which exist inde-
pendently of the text are to be recognized as both embodied in and
revealed by the narrative. Allegory employs images with tradition-
ally designated meanings to facilitate this process of reading, to
make it appear 'natural', so that the truth at which the narrative
arrives is seen to be natural rather than arbitrarily imposed. It is
modern allegory, with its emphasis upon styles of significance which
are validated by the individual's subjective perception of them, that
focuses most completely upon the arbitrary nature of interpreta-
tion, refusing to create an awareness of a core of meaning within
the text that reflects the existence of some unifying absolute in the
world. A typological allegory makes the reader realize a personal
responsibility for the meaning produced by the text because the full
conceptual dimensions of the narrative must be realized before all
the narrative details will cohere. Modern allegory acknowledges its
inability to indicate a definitive level of meaning by supporting a
number of potential readings while making the reader aware that
the validity of any one interpretation is the responsibility of the
individual.
The substance of Quilligan's argument is taken up by Jonathan
Culler in Structuralist Poetics, where he treats the attitude towards
interpretation revealed by allegory as a contrast to the kind of read-
ing required by Romantic symbolism. He describes the process of
interpretation as the identification of thematic structures which unify
elements of the text, and the subsequent establishment of correla-
tions between these structures and external cultural referents; a
process which becomes increasingly abstract as more of the experi-
ence of the text is made intelligible by more broadly encompassing
external structures. Culler argues that allegory challenges this pro-
cess of making texts coherent by challenging the sense that this is
a natural process. The symbolic text assumes that it is natural. The
symbol is based upon the principle of incarnation rather than rep-
resentation. The symbolic image and its referent - which is assumed
to be a metaphysical force made manifest in reality - fuse in the
symbol so that the independent reality of each is lost. According to
such Romantic practitioners of symbolic writing as Goethe and
Coleridge, the symbol partakes of the reality which it represents
and therefore its meaning is immediately apparent: the image coin-

cides with its abstract meaning and so is significant in itself. The
allegorical image, however, points to a meaning which is not inher-
ent in it; the two are arbitrarily linked, whether by the allegorist or
by literary tradition. Consequently, Culler argues, allegory demon-
strates the artificiality of commentary by stressing the difference be-
tween apparent and ultimate meanings, focusing upon the 'semantic
leap' needed to produce meaning. The symbol contains all the rami-
fications of its meaning but allegory recognizes that it cannot fuse
the empirical and the external, and so demystifies the symbolic
relation. But a discrepancy between image and referent is a structural
feature of all kinds of signs; they differ only in degree of distance.
This alienation of image from referent or signifier from signified is
made more obvious by the allegorical sign which does not usually
function as a discrete unit in the way that the symbol does. Allegory
works as a network of referential images to which are attributed
more meanings than they can contain literally and consequently
they gain dimensions of extrinsic meanings which refer to multiple
areas of cultural experience. These multivalent images function as
units within the narrative structure and so differ in type from sym-
bols as they function within a symbolistic aesthetic.
One of the most influential recent theorists of allegory is Paul de
Man who, in the essay 'The Rhetoric of Temporality' and the mono-
graph Allegories of Reading, repeats Jonathan Culler's valorization of
allegory at the expense of the symbol. Both Culler and de Man
reverse the fortunes of allegory, which has been a rather despised
genre, in contrast to the much-vaunted symbol. This has been espec-
ially the case in the period since Romanticism when the symbol has
been regarded as the proper vehicle for individual literary genius.
De Man argues that the 'authentic' self exists in, and through, the
language structures which are inevitably imposed upon experience
and which permit knowledge and self-reflection. According to de
Man, allegory recognizes the dichotomy which exists between lan-
guage and experience by revealing what he describes as a temporal
void, wherein the sign acknowledges its separation from its origin
in experience.11 A symbol establishes a relationship with nature
which is intersubjective; the symbolic subject borrows from nature
the 'temporal stability' which it cannot itself have, existing as it
does within the temporal limitations of language. The aesthetic of
the symbol is based upon the assumption that it is possible to achieve
an illusory identification of the self with the 'Other', an assumption
based upon the belief that all manifestations of time may be simul-
taneously fused in, and through, the symbol: something akin to
Wordsworth's 'spots of time', described in The Prelude. But alle-
gory, de Man claims, does not attempt an identification between
the moments of a sequence because it is based upon the principle of
anteriority. In allegory, the sign refers through repetition to a pre-
vious sign with which it cannot identify because, in de Man's words,
'it is of the essence of this previous sign to be pure anteriority'.12 Alle-
gorical repetition - the relationships among signs in a typological
allegorical narrative - is a temporal process assuming difference
as well as resemblance but denying the possibility of any complete
identification. The language of allegory is then purely figurative; it
is not based upon perception. Rather than attempt to unite the self
and world through emotion, the allegorical sign refers to previous
signs, the text's meaning is derived from other texts, and because
the narrative thus exists in a purely linguistic context it reveals an
'authentically temporal destiny', an authentic linguistic self. This
argument that allegory is essentially an intertextual genre is a power-
ful one, given that all cultural systems of value and belief exist as
written linguistic constructs. Pre-Romantic allegory in particular
makes a very strong appeal, through the multivalent referential
function of its images, to structures which are assumed to exist
independently in the world but are represented in texts.
In terms of the contrast with symbolism, allegory does not at-
tempt a linguistic identification between subject and object. In
de Man's terms, in renouncing the desire to coincide, allegory es-
tablishes its language in 'the void of this temporal difference'.13
However, as Murray Krieger has pointed out, in this essay Paul de
Man does not seem to realize that his equation of the 'temporal
void' with ontological truth is itself a linguistic construct and a
mystification which obscures many of the effects which allegory
can achieve and which are akin to those of symbolism.14 The pre-
Romantic allegorical text can, and does, create an illusion of simul-
taneity while remaining aware that it is an illusion, defined and
sustained by an awareness of temporality.
Often an allegorical narrative will use concepts of time as it uses
myth - to generalize ideals by releasing them from the particularity
of a specific historical moment, thus demonstrating the general
applicability of the ideal. Human time, seasonal time, biblical and
mythic time, narrative time, all are drawn together by images which
allude to various cultural and literary sources; they are made to
appear co-existent, creating the sense of an atemporal order of reality.

Kafka blurs the sense of narrative chronicity to create a dream-like
impression, revealing the fact that environment is the outward pro-
jection of the inward focus on the hero's subjective consciousness.
In Metamorphosis, the notions of time and space gradually dissolve
as Gregor's perception becomes increasingly insect-like. These trans-
formations of time are achieved against a background of temporal-
ity; they are defined by the contrast. But de Man's ideas about the
separation of 'levels' in allegory, the conceptual gap which is estab-
lished between the world and the text, apply more fully to modern
allegory than they do to pre-Romantic allegorical practice.
John Barth's Giles Goat-Boy, the subject of lengthy analysis in the
following chapter, does exist largely within a linguistic sphere. The
interpretative process is contained within the realm of literary re-
sponse. Along with many postmodernist writers, Barth questions
the reality of the cultural systems of value to which the text refers
by treating them as fictional constructs. Modern allegorists assume
that interpretation is valid only in terms of the individual's percep-
tion of value and meaning; in postmodernist allegory, however, the
authenticity of the personal identity which is to do the interpreting
is put into question. The 'self is dealt with, not as a distinct per-
sonal identity but in terms of authentic perception and interpre-
tation. Characters are concerned with determining whether they
are personally perceiving patterns of order which exist in the world
or are behaving in obeisance to an implanted code and are perceiv-
ing a reality that is projected by some external force (or conspiracy).
Earlier allegory is concerned with the way invisible, transcendent
ideals may be perceived in a unified interpreted world but writers
like John Barth and Thomas Pynchon analyze the invisible cultural
systems which work through the individual consciousness. The
demonstration of an ideal way of perceiving the world is replaced
by a focus upon the ways in which order is created in the world,
particularly in relation to dominant psychological and philosoph-
ical world-views.
George, the hero of Giles Goat-Boy, recapitulates the archetypal
quest of the spiritual hero from his mysterious birth, through his
momentary illumination, to a mysterious sacrificial death. But the
quest of this postmodernist hero incorporates multiple previous
journeys while indicating that they are anterior and separate through
multiple, often conflicting references to such predecessors as Oedi-
pus, Jesus Christ and Dante, among others. Barth parodies the
methods of earlier allegory by jumping thematically among the

various references of the allegorical narrative. The characters whom
George encounters are all loaded with historical, psychological,
philosophical and sociological significances. George's mentor, Max
Spielman, for example, is associated with Chiron and Vergil, Einstein
and Oppenheimer, Freud and Jung; in his archetypal aspect he is
the eternally wandering and suffering Jew. Within the aesthetic
context of the narrative Max is the humane scientist in contrast with
Eierkopf the positivistic scientist, who exists in a sphere so rarefied
that he cannot perform basic functions like feeding himself without
assistance.
All aspects of the narrative focus upon George's quest for know-
ledge, for a Grand Tutorial philosophy, which will save the whole
of studentdom. Barth treats his fictional world as a cosmic univer-
sity, encompassing all times in multiple historical and cultural cross-
references, a place where all elements of experience are objects of
analysis. This basic metaphor is elaborated in a system of images
based upon scopes and lenses, visual aids, which underline the
themes of knowledge and perception. George is able to look at life
with microscopic precision as well as from a perspective of general-
ity, questioning where identity begins and ends and how knowl-
edge is possible. Barth plays on the notions of 'knowing', 'conceiving'
and 'knowing about' something. Looking, however closely, can only
ever produce 'knowledge about' an object. It is in action and eng-
agement that things are truly known. George's attempts to establish
a Grand Tutorial philosophy, a system of ideal values in the world,
take three main stages. Initially he propounds a doctrine of differ-
entiation. In the sphere of practical politics, especially, this has dis-
astrous results. The unequivocal separation of East and West
Campuses creates dangerous tensions which threaten to engulf
studentdom in a global holocaust. George then supports the notion
of paradox, the unification of opposites. Part of his ambiguous set
of assignments is the imperative to 'Pass All, Fail All', and at this
stage he believes that failure is passage; however, in denying the
categories of life, he denies life itself. Finally, in his moment of
vision, George realizes that all categories are interdependent but
distinct. In his final descent into the belly of the beast (WESCAC,
the West Campus Automatic Computer) with his heroine Anastasia,
who plays Mary Magdalene to his Christ, Beatrice to his Dante, the
two are locked in a sexual embrace. George 'knows' that she is the
'Other' which defines his identity, necessary to him but still distinct
from him. He realizes that all elements in the world are necessary and
complementary, essential to the proper functioning of the university.
Action is necessary to knowledge but this philosophy of action
cannot be adequately expressed in discursive terms. The individual
can only know and learn in personal terms. Though allegory can
present an example to be imitated, divergences appropriate to the
individual self and situation must be made. George routes the false
Grand Tutor, the figurative anti-Christ, Harold Bray, but studentdom
in general cannot see that they have been saved. Those like Eierkopf,
who measure value according to appearances, who believe in mira-
cles only when they can see them, believe in the false prophet Bray.
They are so conditioned to live by illusions, fictions, that they can-
not 'see' truth. The central, enlightening experience of the narrative
is relevant only to George. But his is a secular belief, with no faith
in an ideal afterlife, and because it is temporal it fades in memory.
In later years, George is reduced to silence. The content of his vi-
sion forces upon him the knowledge that he cannot give advice and
cannot fulfil the prophetic role established by his predecessors.
Images of lenses and scopes, elaborating the interlocking themes of
knowledge, perception and spiritual insight do lead to a unifying
centre in the text, a source of narrative continuity. In this, Giles
Goat-Boy is akin to earlier forms of allegory. But the imagistic continu-
ity does not produce a corresponding semantic unity; the meaning
of the hero's experience is its own ineffability and the impossibility
of representing this significance in the world. The hierarchy of value
which is established through the imagery and the referential function
of the narrative events is valid only for the hero as an individual;
none of the other characters is capable of repeating or understanding
the significance of the hero's actions. George is a postmodern hero
who incorporates all previous heroes and in so doing reveals the
limitations of their experience and teachings for the modern individ-
ual, just as he recognizes his own.
Giles Goat-Boy is a modern allegory par excellence but Barth has
employed allegorical elements in earlier works such as The End of
the Road. In this text, he uses local verisimilitude as a background
to a moral and philosophical inquiry. Whereas Giles Goat-Boy is cast
in the form of the quest, The End of the Road takes the form of the
allegorical battle or debate. The two central characters, Jake Horner
and Joe Morgan, represent radically opposed philosophies of life.
Jake is aware of the fragility and arbitrariness of identity, the limit-
ations and relativity of defined intellectual positions. Consequently,
he is unable to make choices. He alternates between periods of
'weatherlessness', when any sense of a distinct self disappears, and

periods of 'cosmopsis': physical paralysis caused by his inability to
choose. Joe also accepts the fact of modern relativism but believes
that the individual can create his own essence, can explain all actions
according to their causes - both psychological and moral - by trans-
forming relative value into 'the subjective equivalent of an absolute';
he idealizes intellectual clarity and order. Joe's wife, Rennie, is the
battlefield upon which the struggle of these opposing ethical systems
is fought. Jake undermines her fragile belief in Joe's coherence of
personality, precipitating an act of adultery. While Jake insists on
the essential enigma of any human action such as this illicit sexual
embrace, which is motivated by ambiguous unconscious drives, Joe
adheres to the principle of reason, relentlessly pursuing an analyt-
ical search for absolute causes. Eventually, Rennie dies. The alleg-
orical aspects of the narrative emerge from its demand that the
reader accept the premise that Jake is physically paralyzed by an
abstract response to the world and that Jake will pursue his abstract
ideals literally to the death. The narrative consistently refers to
systems of belief which lie outside it. Like earlier forms of allegory,
Barth's narrative analyzes contemporary philosophical issues which
exist in the world. The allegorical narrative textualizes those issues.
But unlike pre-Romantic allegory, The End of the Road does not
endorse any single system; within this narrative the absolute values
dealt with will only lead to the perception of an ideal order of
reality in terms of the individual believer. There is no achievement
of consensus. Postmodern allegory returns more fully than modern-
ist forms (such as Kafka's) to the methods of pre-Romantic allegory.
Barth addresses issues raised by the operations of intellectual systems
which exist outside the individual's perception of them but ideo-
logically the text refuses to endorse a concept of value which is
apprehended in anything other than subjective and personal terms.
An allegorical writer like Thomas Pynchon also employs the sorts
of methods used in The End of the Road but the characters of The
Crying of Lot 49 represent psychological rather than philosophical
world-views. Pynchon's narrative focuses upon the relationship
between individual consciousness and dominant social, historical
and cultural systems of meaning. Oedipa's quest to define the
meaning of the Tristero causes her to explore various modes of
perception in the attempt to discover whether this system exists in
the nature of reality as an alternative America, or as a conspiracy
to take over the world or as a paranoid delusion and projection of
her own solipsistic imagination. The concept of self is treated in The
Crying of Lot 49 in terms of receiving and organizing information

from an environment which is succumbing to the onslaught of
entropy. In an entropic world of fading distinctions the referential
function of words dissipates, failing to reveal any distinct symbolic
meaning: fantasy and reality are blurred in the perception of the
individual. Pynchon deals with the invisible systems of value which
may be responsible for projecting versions of reality through the
individual consciousness and Oedipa must determine whether these
systems are working for or against the eventual triumph of entropy.
Her heroic quality ultimately derives from the way she resists the
temptation to retreat into a single, exclusive, entropic world-view
which would lend significance and value to her experience. She
gathers enough information about the Tristero to establish two
possible modes of significance but she cannot reconcile the two
within a larger, ideal perspective. Likewise, the reader is left to
explicate the signs with which she is confronted. The narrative does
not 'close' the interpretative process by indicating a definitive way
of reading both it and the world it describes. The narrative remains
open to production by the reader: clues are offered for synthesis
but they resist any explicit, one-dimensional interpretation. This is
achieved through the use of multivalent imagery which emphasizes
its own arbitrary nature by referring to incongruent, contradictory
sets of referents and requires a vigorous process of interpretation,
thus focusing upon the nature and complexity of the activity of
interpretation itself.
Allegory, generally, can best be defined in terms of the way it
thematizes the concept of interpretation, both in relation to the kind
of interpretative response narratives demand through the organiza-
tion of their narrative elements and in relation to the ideological
value which is attached to interpretation as a means of perceiving
some ideal or absolute value manifest in an interpreted world.
Twentieth-century forms of allegory - both modern and postmodern
- can be defined according to the way they modify this characteristic
concern. Modern allegories, such as Kafka's, treat interpretation as
valid only in terms of subjective individual perception. Postmodern
allegories, however, question the authenticity of this personal iden-
tity in relation to the invisible cultural systems of value which may be
projected through the individual consciousness and into the world.
Consequently, in the work of John Barth and Thomas Pynchon
modes of interpretation rather than systems of ideal value become
the prime objects of allegorical analysis.
7
John Barth's Giles Goat-Boy
and Post-Romantic
Allegory
Paul de Man's demystification of allegorical rhetoric has overtaken
such theories as those proposed by Edwin Honig and Angus Fletcher
and others, with the result that allegory is now treated largely in
terms of the politics and rhetoric of representation. Textuality and
temporality are the two concepts which define the nature of the
paradox that de Man describes as encapsulating allegory:
Allegory is sequential and narrative, yet the topic of its narration

is not necessarily temporal at all, thus raising the question of the
referential status of a text whose semantic function, though
strongly in evidence, is not primarily determined by mimetic
moments; more than ordinary modes of fiction, allegory is at the
furthest remove from historiography.1
So, paradoxically, allegory attempts to articulate what is atemporally

true (the logos) in a temporal mode of representation. In other words,
the form and substance of allegory are of radically incompatible
kinds. The paradigm for this view of allegory would be The Divine
Comedy and specifically the final cantos of the Paradiso. There Truth',
the transcendental One, is alluded to as that which eludes verbal
representation or comprehension. Dante's allusive goal is 'there',
just outside the text, our textual grasp of it is always momentarily
deferred, as all means of representation fail him.
Thither my own wings could not carry me,

But that a flash my understanding clove,
Whence its desire came to it suddenly.
High phantasy lost power and here broke off;

Yet, as a wheel moves smoothly, free of jars,
145
My will and my desire were turned by love,

The love that moves the sun and the other stars.2
But what if we were to entertain the possibility that this concept of

a radical epistemological disjunction within allegory is itself a
mystification, an obfuscation of the status of both the allegorical
sign and its 'transcendental signified' as writing? It would then
appear that allegory is not to be located 'at the furthest possible
remove from historiography' but at only two removes from history,
the stuff of mimesis.
Allegory writes of the writing of history. It does not de-scribe the
world, erasing the semiotic nature of reality. Allegory does not de-
scribe but inscribes: it reconstitutes the world as a sign or conjunc-
tion of texts, of writings, awaiting interpretation. So, in the example
above, Dante is propelled out of his narration by his reading of the
Bible, by his awareness of the Christian tradition of an ineffable
God manifest through His love for His creatures. There is, granted,
no direct reference to the Bible, but then we are rarely given foot-
notes to the deja lu. The conjunction of logos, God, divine love and
the ineffable One forms a nexus of familiar (and familial) concepts,
a context of assumed knowledge. And it is within this matrix of
presuppositions that the text situates itself and in terms of which it
becomes intelligible. For the Christian tradition and its sacred text
mediate not only Dante's experience and his articulation of it. The
Bible also mediates between our reading of the text and what we
are led to believe of it, by interposing between its literal and meta-
phoric significances what amounts to an index to the text's Christian
connotations.
But to return to the concept of history and to the assertion that
the allegorical narrative writes of the writing of history. With the
example of Dante still in mind it becomes possible to argue that
allegory writes of the writing of sacred history upon the world. Put
another way, this means that the allegory of The Divine Comedy is
about the ways in which the Bible has inscribed its own set of
significances upon the world, prescribing what has subsequently
become known as 'reality'. So allegory or allegoria - allos (other) +
agoria (speaking) - speaks of the sacred 'Other' as it is constituted
by other, anterior, texts. Rather than the temporal atemporality of
allegory, this then is the allegorical paradox: this intertextual re-
gression that facilitates the text's progression.
In this generalized account of allegory there is no paradox of
John Barth's Giles Goat-Boy and Post-Romantic Allegory 147
allegorical representation. Allegory is 'grammatological', in Derrida's

sense, and so too is 'the topic of its narration'. The signs of this
'topic' - the transcendental signified - are located in the same inter-
textual space as that occupied by the allegorical narrative. Repre-
sentation, under the auspices of allegory, is no simple process of
fictive encoding. For rather than attempt simply to represent the
failure of temporal representation to represent the ineffable - to
make it present to knowledge - allegory represents instead those
systems of signification which make representation possible and so
set its limits. That is, allegory takes as its subject those differential
categories of meaning, the structures of difference or systems of
signification which admit this failure to picture or to make present
the logos. So if, as I have claimed, allegory alludes to the ineffable
as that which eludes verbal formulation then the only language left
to the allegorical narrative is the language of the supplement: the
vocabulary of the decentred centre.
The rhetorical immediacy of Dante's narrative, for instance, de-
rives from the intermediary (intertextual) supplement: here, the
concept of God is supplemented by the 'Idea' of 'Divine Love' and
the ideological construct that creates a synonymity between the
two. Such concepts and the epistemologies that support them func-
tion within the allegorical narrative as the supplementary signs of
an absolute reality which purports to be their informing principle.
Operating on a set of analogical assumptions, the narrative presup-
poses a relationship of similitude between what would otherwise
appear as isomorphs: the Word and the textual word, the world
and a set of intertextual presuppositions. Michel Foucault describes
a similar, ternary organization of the sign as characteristic of Renais-
sance linguistics.
[A]t that time, the theory of the sign implied three quite distinct
elements: that which was marked, that which did the marking,
and that which made it possible to see in the first the mark of the
second; and this last element was, of course, resemblance.3
But that which makes resemblance itself possible, that which makes
possible the perception of the 'mark', and more particularly 'that
which did the marking', is the supplement. It is the supplement
that spins the web which binds these 'marks', weaving the isomor-
phic inscriptions into a providential text-ure.
The supplement adds itself, it is a surplus, a plenitude enriching

another plenitude, the fullest measure of presence. It cumulates
and accumulates presence. It is thus that art, techne, image, repre-
sentation, convention etc., come as supplements to nature and
are rich with this entire cumulating function.4
It is the contiguity of the supplement ('art, techne, image, represen-

tation, convention', intertextuality, in short) that makes the unspeak-
able, unwriteable, logos perceptible. Dante's God is trapped in the
text's web of Christian connotation, revealed like the figure in a
biblical carpet.
The supplement has not only the power of procuring an absent

presence through its image; procuring it through the proxy (pro-
curation) of the sign, it holds it at a distance and masters it.5
The supplement, the intertext, masters that for which it compen-

sates by explicating its appearance but also and more importantly
by revealing the lexicon of the disseminated centre. That is, the
supplement writes of the inscription of the logos upon history; it
demonstrates the status of the logos as the transcendental signified
of a semiotic world.
It is within this context, particularly, that the importance of
intertextuality to the allegorical genre becomes apparent. As I have
mentioned, this view of allegory operates upon a set of metonymic
assumptions. Allegory presupposes an analogical hermeneutic: see-
ing in one sign the mark of a second and in both 'that which did
the marking' of similitude. In this way, allegory attempts to articu-
late the 'Other', the sacred. Consequently, the notion of functional
analogies is an assumption necessary to the logic of allegory. And
the composition of the word 'analogy' provides an interesting clue
to its function within the allegorical narrative. For 'ana-loga' com-
bines the Greek prefix meaning 'up, back, again, anew' with logos,
signifying 'word, reason, speech'. Further, this renewal or repeti-
tion or retrieval of the Word (which, incidentally, implies an ante-
rior regression of presence) is also the ana-logos, a collection of
memorable sayings or anecdotes, stories of the Word. Within the
narrative, a system of analogies supplements the absent metaphysical
signified, corresponding to and conspiring with the intertexts to
articulate a culturally acceptable 'visualization' of the sacred. These
intertexts - the valorized antecedents to the allegorical narrative,
such as the Bible - are assumed to be capable of articulating the

sacred, of revealing through language a providential, metonymic or
analogical pattern in reality and so they validate any similar syn-
thesis achieved by the allegorical narrative. By lending the author-
ity of a successful precedent, the intertext or pretext attempts to
gain the reader's assent to the authenticity of the narrative's approach
to 'Truth' and its subsequent discovery of a single transcendent
signifying centre in the language of history. So the primary function
of allegorical intertextuality is to act as an interface between the
images of the narrative and their significances, to propel the reader
out of the narrative and into the deja lu on route to a sacred reality
which lies outside the representational capacities of the narrative.
In other words, intertextuality brings the reader, paradoxically, to
the closest possible 'remove from historiography' by writing of
Writing.
Giles Goat-Boy, in part, parodies this function by making allusion
to so many prior texts, so many approaches to 'Truth'. However,
although the number of incidental allusions is great, the text is
centred upon three fundamental anterior texts: the Bible, The Divine
Comedy and Oedipus Rex. It is the role of these texts, initially, to lend
credence to Max Spielman's psycho-proctological speculations which
are outlined early in the narrative but are not vindicated until much
later, in the fulfilment of George's quest. Spielman's masterwork,
The Riddle of the Sphincters, makes an obvious and seemingly parodic
allusion to Oedipus Rex, but it is Spielman's Law of Cyclology - the
principle which holds that 'ontogeny recapitulates cosmogeny' -
which relates this set of anterior texts to George's archetypal or
intertextual quest.6 For it immediately evokes the Darwinian dic-
tum that 'ontogeny recapitulates philogeny' and it is the life of the
species that is the mediating discourse between the history of the
cosmos and the life-history of an individual. Within the narrative
the genesis of and history of the cosmos becomes, necessarily, the
literary tradition of cosmological speculation which in itself repre-
sents a history of the human species. The narrative's intertextuality
thus introduces different formulations of the universe, the nature of
human involvement in it, and of the sacred. George, in the progress
of his quest, assimilates the characteristics of the traditional epic or
allegorical hero, as derived from these texts, to become himself an
archetype. He also repeats some of the central events of human
history. His individual life recapitulates, in general terms, the life of
his species. The parodic tone of Giles Goat-Boy originates in large
part from the intertextual status of its characters, as echoes of the

past inflect the writing of the present.
Initially, George's quest is motivated by an emergent awareness
of his humanity. Raised among goats,
[t]hirteen years they fenced my soul's pasture, I romped without

care [he recalls]. In the fourteenth I slipped their gate - as I have
since many another - I looked over my shoulder, and saw that
what I'd said bye-bye to was my happiness (p. 43).
He is obliged to leave this pastoral Eden as the consequence of his

'Fall' into knowledge and sin. Prompted by pride and envy, George
murders his brother goat in imitation of Cain and so expels himself
from this idyllic community. The sexual dimension of the Fall is
also its cause: rebuffed first by 'Lady Creamhair' and then by the
goat Hedda, George slays his successful rival. That the woman he
attempts to seduce is eventually revealed to be his mother, Virginia
Hector, daughter of the then Chancellor, establishes a symbolic
identity with Oedipus. Likewise, the mystery surrounding his par-
entage and the discovery that his was a virgin birth makes of George
a symbolic latterday Christ-figure, a modern 'Grand Tutor'. His
father is not God, however, but WESCAC (the West Campus Auto-
matic Computer) which, having been programmed to produce a
Grand Tutor, produces the GILES (Grand Tutorial Ideal, Laborat-
ory Eugenical Specimen). In a sense, George discovers not an an-
cestry but a canon, a literary pedigree rather than a genealogy. It is
in the interiorization of this literary context that George discovers
his self. Recognizing his identity to be that of a saviour and his
destiny to be the salvation ('Commencement') of 'studentdom',
George sets himself the task of becoming, from an ignorant goat-
boy, as fully human as possible, of pursuing the traces of supra-
human potential that he perceives as his identity.
His quest for 'the Answers' takes place within a world that is cast
in the form of a University and against a background of loosely
disguised Cold War ('Quiet Riot') politics. Robert Scholes has pro-
vided an incisive analysis of the 'Univers/ity' metaphor in Giles
Goat-Boy, describing it as a place where everything becomes, of
necessity, an object of enquiry, where the quest for learning is al-
ways in progress.7 But it is the theological implication of the meta-
phor that Barth exploits most fully: just as holy orders were the
original object of a university degree, so the means of salvation, a
definition of the contemporary saviour, is the object of George's

progress through this University. His 'wholiness', his identity, is
the first object of the quest. The discordance between the ancient
theological function of the university and its modern, secular and
sceptical form creates the context for the quest, as it exemplifies the
problems of modern relativism with which George must come to
terms. The problem of semantic relativism is particularly pertinent;
the intertextual relationship is a question posed to both reader and
hero. The historical devaluation of textual authority, the question-
able retrievability of textual meaning, is a dilemma that both must
confront.
everyone agreed that few people really took the Finals any more,
if indeed the Finals existed at all, yet no responsible person wanted
to repudiate New Tammany's Moishio-Enochist heritage, which
held Graduation to be the aim of campus life. In consequence,
though everyone still had officially to aspire to Commencement,
there was no agreement on what defined it; no degrees were
awarded, nor in fact were any sought. . . . a Certificate of Profi-
ciency in the Field was all a modern undergraduate need aspire
to, or a modern college award (pp. 441-2).
It is an agreement on what defines 'Commencement' - in fact, all

the concepts 'Commencement' and 'Flunkage', 'Pass' and 'Fail', Truth
and Falsehood with which he struggles - that George must define,
in order to define his self, but he must do this without the benefit
of an authoritative tradition or valorized corpus of assumed know-
ledge. The validity of intertextuality itself is one of his foremost
problems.
The central question posed by the narrative, the nature of the
modern Grand Tutor and of contemporary salvation, has as its
corollary the problem of absolutes: the epistemological and onto-
logical status of absolutes and of absolute distinctions. Lenses and
a variety of 'scopes, as mediums of mediation, explicitly call atten-
tion to the theme of perception throughout the narrative and ques-
tion the possibility of unmediated knowledge. The nature of reality,
whether it be an undifferentiated whole or constituted of categories
or whether these distinctions exist only in subjective formulations
of reality, is part of George's fundamental dilemma concerning
inferiority, a dilemma that is expressed in characteristically alle-
gorical fashion by a hermeneutic problem: the interpretation of
his 'Assignment'. The motto which appears on his PAT (Prenatal

Aptitude Test) card reads: 'Pass All, Fail All', thus confronting him
with his first pair of opposed absolutes. But his Assignment fur-
ther involves the solution of the scientific, political, philosophical,
psychological and religious problems concomitant to this. The
postmodern quality of Giles Goat-Boy is manifest in the manner in
which its hero is obliged to consider every possible cultural and
social implication of his linguistic and interpretative problems. The
Assignment itself reads:
To Be Done at Once, In No Time

1) Fix the Clock
2) End the Boundary Dispute
3) Overcome Your Infirmity
4) See Through Your Ladyship
5) Re-place the Founder's Scroll
6) Pass the Finals
7) Present Your ID-Card, Appropriately Signed, to the Proper Au-
thority (p. 462).
The interpretation of this document and its relation to other texts is

George's central problem, but his attempts to solve it take the form
of a learning process, a progressive regression into the intertextuality
which is preparatory to his final 'mystical' insight.
These attempts bring him into contact with a variety of differing
interpretations of the nature of Commencement, the hero and the
saviour. To approach the question of mediated reality, the narrative
resorts to the mediation of intertextual or anterior narratives, ex-
ploring the various hermeneutic modes and perspectives which may
provide a solution. So George encounters a number of approaches,
some of which he translates into action, adopting in stages three
quite distinct cognitive modes which form in themselves the dialec-
tical process of thesis, antithesis and synthesis.
It is in the style of Christ that the first people he encounters, in
his journey from the goat-barns to Great Mall, become his disciples
or 'Tutees'. And it is through their interpretations of his advice that
George learns the practical (critical) implications of his changing
attitude towards textuality: that is, his analysis of the signs that
surround him. Of course it is Max Spielman, his 'keeper' and advisor
- Vergil to his role as Dante - who is his first disciple. Max's defi-
nition of the concept of 'Grand Tutor' max-imizes its application; it
exemplifies his faith in reasoned, practical humanism and his belief

that a Grand Tutor is one who is capable of achieving real and far-
reaching benefits for the whole of studentdom. However, whilst
this attitude characterizes Max in his general significance as the
'humane scientist' (he is reminiscent of J. Robert Oppenheimer and
Albert Einstein) his archetypal significance is that of the eternally
suffering Jew. Subsequently he interprets suffering and Commence-
ment as synonymous. Max's perceptions are limited by his know-
ledge of previous Grand Tutors and their teachings; he is trapped
within the web of intertextuality. Contrary to his name, Max is
blinkered by mediating archetypes, his awareness determined by
literary tradition: he has difficulty believing George's authenticity
simply because George fails to conform to the traditional pattern.
But just as George must 'Re-place the Founder's Scroll' by writing
The Revised New Syllabus, so he must reinterpret the tradition that
produced him and reformulate, in his self, the nature and function
of the modern saviour. He is not one of the Christian flock, a Chris-
tian sheep, and as Robert Scholes has remarked, the very goatish
nature of this contemporary saviour has the effect of recuperating
sexuality from the margin of theology.8 Max attempts to explain, to
the youthful George, the defining difference between metaphoric
sheep and goats: "The way the campus works, there's got to be
goats for the sheep to drive out, ja? If they don't fail us they fail
themselves, and then nobody passes' (pp. 63-4). But the Judeo-
Christian heritage has ceased to be meaningful in this campus;
'sheep' and 'goats', Elect and Preterite, are among the now ambigu-
ous categories that George must work to redefine. Max does not
realize this when he describes Enos Enoch (Jesus Christ):
He was the Shepherd Emeritus that died for his sheep. But look
here: he told his students that Ask, and you'll find the Answer;
that's why the goyim call him their Grand Tutor and the Founder's
own son (p. 63).
Max believes that a Grand Tutor is defined by what he says and

does - the extent to which he conforms to the archetype. George,
however, possesses an intuitive knowledge of his place within the
matrix of anterior texts, that whatever he might say it is validated
by the fact of his 'being' a Grand Tutor: words and actions locate
rather than define him; he is his own best reader.
Although the events of George's life, from his mysterious birth to
his equally mysterious, sacrificial death, conform in broad outline

to those of Christ's life, the substance of his quest, this 'Answer'
that he will learn, must necessarily be different; particularly as
George 'knows' that he is the Grand Tutor but does not yet know
how he knows. The defamiliarization of the inherited archetype is
further compounded by the fact that he imitates also Dante and
Oedipus. His separation from Max thus becomes inevitable: the
place of 'first disciple' is assumed by Anastasia, George's Beatrice,
even his Mary Magdalene, the generous-minded whore, who finally
leads him to revelation. However, the nature of this revelation is
established intertextually, through the narrative's textual antecedents,
specifically its relationship with Oedipus Rex.
A comic 'idiomatic translation' of this text is incorporated into
the narrative as Taliped Decanus. The relevance of Dean Taliped's
experience to George's quest lies in the similarity of the heroes'
immediate social missions. George intends to rescue studentdom
from the threat of being EATen (by Electro-encephalic Amplifica-
tion and Transmission, which is analogous in terms of 'Quiet Riot'
politics to the contemporary nuclear threat) by disarming and re-
programming WESCAC. Likewise Taliped
contrived to save us from the clutch of that she-monster at our

entrance-gate - who quizzed us with riddles and then ate us
when we flunked (p. 321).
The 'Riddle of the Sphincters' confronts them both and it is in his

final illumination that George fully comprehends the Law of
Cyclology; he reenacts it as he recapitulates the particular experi-
ence not only of Dante but also Oedipus's blind insight. The comic
- but not farcical - form of Taliped Decanus does not detract from its
serious function within the narrative and, in fact, serves it. A text
within a text, it makes of Giles Goat-Boy a meta-text, creating in
synecdochal fashion an 'intertext'. Once again the reader is con-
fronted with the problem of intertextuality and the hermeneutic
that it presupposes. The comic way in which it flouts its own arti-
fice is one of the many ways in which the whole narrative calls
attention to the fact that it is an artifact, something to be read, a text
among the texts from which it derives its intelligibility. Taliped
Decanus distracts readers from an involvement with the literal plot
and refocuses attention upon the (letteral) processes of interpreta-
tion, processes by which they, and the hero, have been constructing
meaning. This is also the purpose of the episode in which George

asks directions. He turns from the librarian thinking
[s]imple answer to a simple question, but lacking which this tale

were as truncate as the Scroll, an endless fragment!
'-less fragment', I thought I heard her murmur as I stooped
through the little door she'd pointed out (p. 770).
He turns and steps through the looking-glass, as it were, out of one

text and directly into another. Giles Goat-Boy includes within itself
a reader of Giles Goat-Boy in order to draw attention to the processes
of reading, to its theme of mediated interpretation, intertextuality,
and to the quest for knowledge.
Kennard Sear, the narrative's Freudian psychologist, with his
predilection for 'polymorphous perversity', conceives of knowledge
as the total loss of innocence, the exploration of every aspect of the
psyche in an unceasing quest for 'Answers' - in the manner of
Taliped or his 'Professor of Prophesy', Gynander - and which in his
terms constitutes Commencement. But Sear too draws his opinions
from the established pattern of salvation,
Ye would be like Founders, the Old Syllabus says, with knowledge of

Truth and Falsehood. Very well, then we've got to be like Founders,
even if the things we learn destroy u s . . . (p. 383).
Consequently, he takes the tragic view that 'self-knowledge is al-

ways bad news', epitomized by Taliped's fate. Like Max, contrary
to his name, Sear's is not a reliable point of view, afflicted as he is
by cancer of the sinus: the decadence he perceives as the only pos-
sible means to Graduation may be merely the subjective projection
of his own physical decay.
The question of whether perceived reality consists only of pro-
jected distinctions is posed most dramatically by Eblis Eierkopf. In
contrast to the 'Founder' of Taliped Decanus, the
Founder all-potent and -wise

Who sees with unspectacled eyes (p. 328),
the positivistic scientist perceives reality from his rarified, ab-

stracted realm only through such mediating instruments as tele-
scopes, microscopes, 'Telerama' screens and lenses. Stunted and
impotent, Eierkopf holds that Graduation represents the suppres-

sion and control of all passions. Consequently, he can employ logic
to prove that he himself is a Graduate.
'Commencement is a conclusion', he replied at once. 'There's

nothing miraculous about it: when you've eliminated your pas-
sions, or put them absolutely under control, you've Commenced.
That's why I call WESCAC the Grand Tutor' (p. 407).
However, he does admit to the occasional craving for a miracle,

which he describes as trying 'to take nature by surprise', to 'catch
her napping' (p. 409), yet he believes that when 'something looks
miraculous it's because we're using the wrong lenses' (p. 410).
Eierkopf is a naive reader who does not recognize mediation as
mediation, who has 'naturalized' the cognitive grids or channels
imposed upon experience. He believes purely in the evidence fur-
nished by his own (myopic) eyes, mistaking an obfuscating texture
for a luminous or at least transparent text.
Together Eierkopf and Sear, with their differing formulations of
salvation, help George to develop his first mode of interpretation,
his first Grand Tutorial philosophy: the principle of analysis and
differentiation - sorting out the goats from the sheep. Perceiving
that Eierkopf is not altogether free of baser instincts or Sear of a
certain naivete, that both are tainted by traces of 'the Other', their
opposites, and shocked by New Tammany's illicit political and eco-
nomic dealings with the Student's Union of Nikolay College - al-
though these relations are designed to strengthen a practical detente
- George reasons that the way to Commencement must lie in the
necessity of making clear and strict distinctions, of preventing the
logical collapse of absolutes into their contraries: as between Pas-
sage and Failure, Truth and Falsehood. He should be suspicious of
this conclusion for it is while he is being railed at by Stoker - a type
of the 'Dean O'Flunks' - that George's illumination comes to him.
Ignoring this unpromising context, he sets about completing his
Assignment. He first attempts to 'Fix the Clock', using Eierkopf's
'Infinite Divisor' to distinguish 'Tick' from 'Tock' and so to achieve
a perfect accuracy. Likewise, he advises the Chancellor, 'Lucky'
Rexford, to end the Boundary Dispute by widening the gap that
separates east and west campuses, to cease all dealings with the
Nikolayans and with his devilish half-brother, Stoker. Satisfied thus
far, he defines as his own 'Infirmity' his ambiguous co-mixture of

the caprine and the human. Therefore, Sear advises 'conscious de-
pravity' as irrefutable evidence of his humanity and, in order that
he might 'See Through [His] Ladyship', masturbation as the explo-
ration of the female elements of his psyche - self-knowledge in the
'Old Syllabus' sense of carnal knowledge. But George has already
identified Anastasia as his 'Ladyship': he realizes that her sexual
generosity is motivated by neither nymphomania nor martyrdom
to the needs of others but is the result of her failure to assert her
own will. So, he concludes, such perspicacity as this surely over-
comes the limited insight which had earlier been his 'Infirmity', and
also allows him to 'see through' or understand Anastasia. Thus
encouraged, he proceeds to the Library where he instructs WESCAC
to classify the previously unclassifiable Founder's Scroll sui generis,
by creating 'unique categories for unique items' (p. 591). And so,
having re-placed the Founder's Scroll, he proceeds to the 'Belly' of
WESCAC, there to take and to pass the Finals.
When he emerges it is to find the whole campus in chaos. Far
from passing all, he has failed everything. The Clock has stopped,
jammed by the 'Infinite Divisor'; New Tammany teeters on the brink
of Campus Riot III; the power supply is threatened by the Chancel-
lor's refusal to deal with the administrator of the Powerhouse, Stoker;
WESCAC has reclassified every text in the Library and the Found-
er's Scroll has disappeared; Anastasia has been raped, largely as a
result of his misguided Tutoring; and he finds that he escapes the
lynching mob only to be thrown into Main Detention. The basic
flaw embodied in George's philosophy is the assumption of a single
immanent meaning intrinsic to the absolutes with which he is deal-
ing. He assumes a transparency of meaning, independent of any
form of mediation, in the signs that he has rearranged. This as-
sumption translates into the practical concept of self-sufficiency or
autonomy, a concept radically at odds with the intertextual nature
of the 'University'.
Not surprisingly then, it is from a text that he learns of his inter-
pretative naivete, his allegorical illiteracy. In the midst of his despair,
in the full realization that he has 'flunked', Virginia Hector reads to
him from the 'Old Syllabus': 'Passed are the flunked'.
[T]hose dark and famous words from the Seminar-on-the-Hill

brought me upright. As might a man bewildered, they showed
me in one flash the source and nature of my fall, the way to the
Way, and, so I imagined, the far gold flicker of Commencement

Gate (p. 646).
So begins his second attempt to fulfill his Assignment, adopting

now the antithesis of his original principle - the antithesis of anti-
theses - the cognitive mode of synthesis. George now denies the
reality of categories, arguing that the University exists as a seamless
whole. He locates his previous failure in the misguided attempt to
have his Tutees deny undeniable aspects of themselves: aspects
'unshuckable; nay unreal because falsely distinguished from their
contraries' (p. 646). Finally this proves to be an inadequate approach,
with practical results as disastrous as his first foray for, in affirming
synthesis as the Truth and condemning differentiation as False,
George affirms the very categories he would collapse.
He announces the unreality of such arbitrary distinctions as 'Tick'
and 'Tock', 'East' and 'West', 'Passage' and 'Failure'. Such a sudden
inversion in matters of social policy - as practised by Lucky Rexford,
for instance - does nothing to ameliorate the chaotic state of the
campus. But George does progress from the reductive approach
adopted in his initial attempt at Tutoring, and begins to embrace
the complexity - intertextuality - of the University. The greatest
progress in George's attempt to solve the problem of salvation and
his most marked increase in self-knowledge are made in his new
formulation of the relationship between the self and the 'Other'.
This problem is posed initially by Max's incarceration and imminent
execution, coupled with his conviction that suffering is Commence-
ment and his consequent refusal to help himself. It is complicated
further when Max is joined by the captured Student Unionist 'spy'
Leonid who, like Max, is immobilized - 'cosmopsitized', to borrow
a term from The End of the Road - by the complexities of the relation-
ship between selfishness, selflessness and unselfishness, the motivat-
ing forces behind each and the relative 'passedness' of each. At first
George assumes that Max's desire to take upon himself the guilt of
others, to suffer for them and so to atone for his own 'flunkedness'
- traces of his 'Other' - is prompted by vanity and selfishness: as
is Leonid's incompetent attempt at espionage, designed to atone for
his previous mistakes and to prove him a worthy member of the
Student Union. Both try to marginalize the 'Other', to create a valor-
ized centre of being or self: a privileged 'interior'. But the immed-
iate consequence of this shared 'inferiority complex' is that neither
is able to choose between liberty on the one hand and either death
John Earth's Giles Goat-Boy and Post-Romantic Allegory 159
or continuing incarceration on the other. It is Leonid's abortive

attempt to commit suicide that clarifies the problem for George: he
interprets this selfish bid to divorce the self from the context of
selfhood, to erase the self and so achieve a perfect selflessness, as
the paradox of the self that is affirmed in the act of effacing it. As
a consequence of his new hermeneutic and 'synthetic' mode of
cognition, George advises them to act as selfishly as they wish, to
embrace the 'Other', the 'flunkedness' of their actions, for Failure is
all that can be achieved in this campus, and in any case Failure is
Passage. This does not prevent an unparadoxical choice being made,
however: Max is executed the following day.
George begins to perceive the inadequacy of this philosophy when
he is again confronted with the havoc that his advice has wreaked
upon the College. Politically, economically and socially, it is as
chaotic as ever: the power supply still runs dangerously low as the
Chancellor abandons his administrative responsibilities to follow
George's latest catchcry: 'Embrace!' The reductivism inherent in this
approach is again revealed as he attempts to 'See Through [His]
Ladyship'. Taking this injunction literally now rather than as a
psychological or epistemological metaphor, George studies Anastasia
from every possible aspect, seeking to know her in a way that will
lead to illumination. He perceives her as somehow alien, unmistak-
ably yet mysteriously 'other' than him. Her various motivations,
particularly, elude any conception he can form of her.
'In any case', I said, 'I've felt for some time that until I see through
My Ladyship I can't be sure I understand anyone, myself included'
(pp. 709-10).
Here he diagnoses his fundamental cognitive problem: he cannot

approach the question of salvation and the issue of the nature of a
modern Grand Tutor - of his self - until he gains the knowledge of
that which is 'other' and so prerequisite to self-knowledge. It is
from the solution of this dilemma that answers to all corollary pro-
blems will follow. George must know the truth about himself, the
truth of his own existential status and the conditions of his exist-
ence - to know how he knows - before he can arbitrate on other
problems that involve first principles. So he examines the mystery
that is Anastasia to divine biographical, psychological, medical,
physiometrical, visual, olfactory, tactile, gustatory and auditory
knowledge of her. But it is his fluouroscopic knowledge of her
'interiority' that brings into focus the immensely complex nature of

the beings and the world with which he is dealing. Awed by the
spectacle of the mechanical processes of existence, like respiration
and digestion, he wonders at the fact that such an organism is
further complicated by ideals, 'dreams of passedness, of love...';
finally, he groans, 'I don't understand anything' (p. 717).
This insight into his own ignorance prepares him for revelation:
an intertextual epiphany. Just as Dante was obliged to abandon
reason in his quest for illumination and as Oedipus achieved wis-
dom only when blind and exiled from the scene of his spurious
cognitive triumphs, so George must admit his failure to discover, as
yet, an 'essential' Answer. He must acknowledge his self to be a
tabula rasa awaiting the inscription of 'the Answer'.
It is the confrontation with Leonid and Peter Greene - both now
totally blind - that sets him upon his final course. Shocked by the
sight and caught in the web of logical paradox by Stoker's mocking
question - 'So there they sit, Goat-Boy; two blind bats! Are they
passed or failed?' (p. 753) - the shift in his cognitive approach is
now neither reasoned nor logical but a felt realization of aporia. It
constricted my reason like a torture-tool from the Age of Faith.

Passage was Failure, and Failure Passage; yet Passage was Passage,
Failure Failure! Equally true, none was the Answer; the two were
not different, neither were they the same; and true and false, and
same and different - Unspeakable! Unimaginable! Surely my mind
must crack! (p. 754).
As he surrenders his essentialist notion of meaning and releases

himself to the impact of this realization of differance, Tower Clock
chimes - somehow unjammed. Actually, George could be said to
have fulfilled his Assignment at this point, in that he 'Fixes the
Clock', 'Ends the Boundary Dispute' in his transcendence of op-
posed categories, 'Overcomes His Infirmity' and 'Re-Places the
Founder's Scroll' by reinterpreting in modern terms the concept of
enlightenment - all at once, in no time. But he has yet to 'See Through
[His] Ladyship' in his approach to the transcendent. Here, he makes
a preliminary incursion into the realm of signs which exist, para-
doxically, within the narrative yet outside verbal formulations or
cognitive distinctions. He now sustains until the end the epistemo-
logical mode of 'transcendence' and the corresponding narrative
mode of intertextuality.
Concomitant with this 'illumination' is the awareness that op-

posites exist, not in any absolute opposition, but as necessary and
complementary interdependent signs or texts. George's develop-
ment is manifest most clearly in the shifting location of the 'other'
which defines him. Initially he identifies as his 'enemy' Harold Bray,
then it is WESCAC; finally he recognizes that neither is an enemy
but they are opposites which define him just as he defines them,
necessarily and complementarily. Bray explains this function to
George but is disbelieved, that he was chosen by WESCAC for
the role of proph-prof, foil, and routed antigiles. As John the

Bursar had been necessary to declare Enos Enoch's matriculation
and administer to him the rites of enrolment, so he Bray had been
appointed not only to Certify my Passage to the Finals . . . but to
pretend to Grand Tutorhood himself, in order that I might drive
him out from Great Mall in proof of my authenticity (p. 602).
Finally, the ontological status of Harold Bray remains a mystery;

his protean nature, the capacity to deceive the unwary, conspire
with the biblical intertext to suggest that he is indeed the 'antigiles',
even the 'Dean O'Flunks' himself. Yet his ability to enter WESCAC's
Belly, where only a Grand Tutor may enter unEATen, implies that
it is with WESCAC that he conspires although whether as a crea-
tion of the computer or its equal remains obscure. Certainly, he
defines through opposition the Grand Tutorial quality of George,
foregrounding his biblical derivation through the shared intertext.
So it is Bray whom 'flunked' studentdom inevitably choose as
their Grand Tutor, reviling George and requiring that he submit to
prolonged and frequent incarceration for his own protection. But
why is it that Bray is chosen? Why is he the privileged product of
the intertextual code? He is, like the Devil he resembles, given to
quoting Scripture (the Founder's Scroll), proclaiming partial truths
to ensnare unwary minds. His capacity to perform miracles by
defying every natural law deceives those who, like Eierkopf, base
their belief upon the assumption of a transparent semantic essence
- an unmediated vision - and the ideal of an ancient archetype.
Eierkopf, despite his myopia and plethora of corrective lenses, dis-
covers in Bray's shape-shifting the miracle he has craved, and so
he succumbs to 'Evil', embracing it as an ultimate 'Truth'. More-
over, Bray's conception of the Answers corresponds to that of
'fallen' studentdom - his concern is with ends rather than means,
appearance rather than salvation. His attitude is eminently practical:

meaning is an essence, knowledge is a thing to be infused, Answers
dispensed, to the end that a 'Certificate of Proficiency in the Field'
is finally possessed and thence the required aspiration to Com-
mencement can be quietly forgotten.
In contrast, the Answer that is revealed to George in a moment
of revelation takes a form which eludes temporal formulation or
translation into words and actions. But while this transcendental
trope eludes textuality from George's perspective, the narrative trans-
lates revelation into an allusive, intertextual epiphany. He is pre-
pared for this by his on-campus experience, which has stripped
him of perceptual limitations and erased from his self visual and
cognitive mediations. He is left with Anastasia and her professions
of love. Like Dante, George discovers that sympathetic love is the
paradoxical medium of direct, unmediated knowledge - the cor-
relative to allegorical rhetoric which weaves together text and
intertext - it legitimates and valorizes an otherwise arbitrary relation.
In his final descent into WESCAC's Belly with Anastasia, 'knees to
chin and arsy-turvy - like two shoes in a box or that East-Campus
sign of which her navel had reminded me' (p. 775), George shares
the 'wholiness' of the contextual signs; like yin and yang, he and
Anastasia are defining, necessary opposites. And, locked in a sexual
embrace, they approach the console as one, where Anastasia con-
nects WESCAC's Output jack to its Input socket, 'grounding' the
whole self-enclosed system. The human and the mechanical, both
are contiguous in George's vision of a unified, seamless reality as,
interpreting through his Ladyship, he passes the Finals.
[I]n Anastasia I discovered the University whole and clear. Mother

of my soul, its pulse throbbed all around us; my Father's eye it
glowed near, whose loving enquiry I perceived through my
Ladyship.... In that sweet place that contained me there was no
East, no West, but an entire, seamless campus . . . all one, and one
with me. Here lay with there, tick clipped tock, all serviced nothing;
I and my Ladyship, all were one.... I the passer, she the passage,
we passed together, and together cried, 'Oh, wonderful!' Yes and
No. In the darkness, blinding light! The end of the University!
Commencement Day! (p. 777).
Thus, in a moment of mystical metonymy he comes to know the

nature of reality, of blind illumination, of salvation, located in the
mystery of creation. As isomorphism becomes a syncretically based

system of analogy, those oppositional signs which the narrative
foregrounds - 'tick', 'tock', 'all', 'nothing', 'Pass', 'Fail' - are made
synonymous in a vacuous plenitude of meaning. Now he under-
stands Spielman's Law of Cyclology with both an intuitive and
practical knowledge, and it is as he described it in the narrative's
opening: 'Ontogeny recapitulates cosntogeny - what is it but to say
that proctoscopy repeats hagiography?' (p. 41). Thus grounded,
George's providential system is 'Ana-stasis'; his mystical discourse
is an endlessly replicating signification of the 'Same'. And he learns
this not simply as an individual: literally the son of studentdom, he
has 'letterally' repeated, in the progress of his quest, the archetypal
experiences of Christ, Dante and Oedipus; his narrative ontogeny
repeats an intertextual cosmogony.
It is Dante whom he most clearly resembles in the final revelation
of the transcendental Same. In his final approach to the single cen-
tre of Heaven Dante perceives the whole universe, all creation and
history, united in God.
O grace abounding whereby I presumed

So deep the eternal light to search and sound
That my whole vision was therein consumed!
In that abyss I saw how love held bound
Into one volume all the leaves whose flight
Is scattered through the universe around;
How substance, accident and mode unite
Fuse, so to speak, together, in such wise
That this I speak of is one simple light.9
The substance of these revelations is impossible to capture within

the limitations of temporal discourse. Both narratives appeal to a
culturally accepted visualization of 'Truth', written by the intertext,
as the closest they can come to representing the sacred Word.
There is no difference between the visible marks that God has

stamped upon the surface of the earth, so that we may know its
inner secrets, and the legible words that the Scriptures, or the
sages of Antiquity, have set down in the books preserved for us
by tradition. The relation to these texts is of the same nature as
the relation to things: in both cases there are signs to be discov-
ered and then, little by little, made to speak.... The process is
everywhere the same: that of the sign and its likeness, and this is
why nature and the word can intertwine with one another to
infinity, forming, for those who can read it, one vast single text.10
That which weaves these signs into a text is, of course, resemblance:
that which Foucault terms 'the discourse of the Same'. But 'the Same'
is known only as it is disseminated in the signs that constitute this
'one vast single text'. It is this aporia, this irresolvable vacillation
between 'the mark' and 'the marking' that allegory translates into
epiphany: the narrative has recourse to an intertextual 'revelation' of
the Same as the climax of its own plot, so that it may have an end.
So Giles Goat-Boy, like The Divine Comedy, discovers through a
metonymic semiotic system a 'mystical' force which gives signifi-
cance to temporal categories and semic distinctions, as necessary
and interdependent. While this is the 'transcendental signified', it is
in turn the 'Signifier' of temporal language and history. Located, by
implication and connotation, outside chronology, it is the 'transcen-
dental signified' and the 'transcendental signifier' both, 'At Once In
No Time'. George, as the Grand Tutor, is the bearer of this narrative
Word. Consequently, he too transcends temporal limtations; he is
released by his position within a figurative discourse that assumes
a plenitude of meaning unavailable to the narrative itself. Unable
to make present the 'being' it names, the narrative constructs the
'supplementary' status of George through the manipulation of
intertextuality, while the mystical precedent of Dante supplants the
Bible as George's primary model or 'intertextual signified'.
In the 'Posttape' to the narrative, however, George, now in his
thirty-third year, returns to the intertextual roles of Christ and
Oedipus. It is no longer Oedipus Rex that he reinterprets but Oedipus
at Colonus. It is proctology rather than hagiography that he enacts
as he describes his fated end: to be reviled by studentdom and
eventually sacrificed. As he realized earlier, Commencement is
'always of the individual student, never of studentdom as such - a
mere abstraction' (p. 543). His is an archetypal post-Romantic ex-
perience which has 'passed' only himself: a mystical discourse of
the Same is intelligible subjectively and only to him. The semiotics
of the University remain as illegible as ever. As a result, his attitude
grows pessimistic and he perceives
an entropy to time, a tax on change: four nickels for two dimes,
but always less silver; our books stay reconciled, but who in mod-
ern times can tell heads from tails? (p. 810).
Like all typological allegorical narratives, Giles Goat-Boy looks for-

ward to a future cataclysm: when Revelation becomes Apocalypse,
when the narrative's analogical structure collapses again into the
free play of intertextual signs. It is only temporarily centred; the
epiphanic moment cannot be sustained just as, and because, tran-
scendental tropes cannot be made present in temporal form: the
analogy will always recede into intertextuality. So too The Revised
New Syllabus recedes into the inter-texture of Giles Goat-Boy as the
'Postscript to the Posttape' adds yet another layer of hermeneutic
material.
Semantic regression, then, is the rhetorical device adopted by post-
Romantic allegory as it takes up the post-structuralist challenge: il
n'y a pas d'hors texte. Rather than naively accept the deconstruction
of logocentrism, as Paul de Man would seem to suggest, modern
allegory problematizes the whole concept of the Word, of textuality,
of writing. Rather than situate itself 'at the furthest remove from
historiography', allegory takes as its subject the possibility and
conditions of every conceivable -graphy. Allegory does not simply
affirm the arbitrary nature of the sign, of representation, but ques-
tions the conventions that make representation and signification
possible. Neither does allegory disavow the arbitrary nature of
meaning. If allegory affirms anything it is the conventional and
intertextual quality of the sign. The hermeneutic assumption funda-
mental to allegory is that a text is intelligible only in terms of ante-
cedent texts: the system of presuppositions that make meaning
possible. So while Paul de Man's conception of allegory can be
misleading, so too are the comments of a critic such as Robert Scholes
who exaggerates the symbolic dimension of allegory.
The allegorist acknowledges the visionary power of his linguistic

medium. He sees through his language. Metaphor, the vital prin-
ciple of language, is also the animating force of allegory.11
Metaphor, the bon mot that links figurative tenor and vehicle, sign
and meaning, is in allegory rather a bon mort. By this I mean that
if a transparent linguistic relation (seeing through language) is some-
how 'animating', then the regressively intertextual nature of the
allegorical trope must be correspondingly enervating. The allegorical
signifier alludes to an intertextual signified that inevitably becomes
another signifier, and so on. To use a well-worn phrase: every decod-
ing is another encoding, as the allegorical narrative alludes to an
elusive meaning situated in a prior encoding. This is the motivating

force of allegory, this quest for unmediated vision which leads ever
deeper into mediation and textuality. It is a quest that leads away
from mimesis but it does not locate us 'at the furthest possible
remove from historiography'. Instead, allegory situates itself at two
removes from history as it writes about the writing of a transcend-
ental discourse.
Conclusion
I have attempted in the preceding chapters to show that there is in
American literature a long and significant tradition of allegorical
writing which has served a dual cultural function. Perhaps the lon-
gevity of allegory in America is due to the way allegory has em-
powered those who situate themselves within the mainstream of
American life as well as those who see themselves as excluded from
the mainstream. The allegorical myth of American exceptionalism
empowers the citizen as the chosen subject of God's providential
history. Meanwhile, the tradition of allegorical subversion empow-
ers the otherwise silenced or marginalized American to articulate
his or her sense of exclusion from America's manifest destiny. This
exclusion may be a voluntary rejection of mainstream culture, as
was the case with Nathaniel Hawthorne, who criticized America
for allowing no role or place for the artist, or this exclusion may be
an enforced rejection by the dominant culture, as is the experience
of Harriet Jacobs. But even one so oppressed as Jacobs, a black slave
woman, still can find a voice and a means of resistance by appro-
priating the allegorical rhetoric of Anglo-American culture and using
it to voice her own rejection of America's myth of national destiny.
More disabling for allegory in the modern period than the subver-
sion of allegorical rhetoric has been the crisis of belief which places
in doubt the possibility of hermeneutic authority. In the absence of
interpretative legitimacy, the allegorical narrative cannot validate
any of its hermeneutic manouevres and so the narrative cannot re-
concile the conflicting literal and figurative significances of its plot.
Giles Goat-Boy comes to terms with this indeterminacy by accepting
the fact of uncertainty. The rhetorical aporia which is revealed as the
culmination of the narrative's quest for 'Answers' remains as the
definitive statement about the knowability of absolutes which must
be represented by, and so constrained by, language. The linguistic
construction of individual subjectivity, exemplified by George's own
intertextual character, coupled with the primacy of subjectivity in
post-Romantic interpretation, ensures that in this postmodernist
allegory no absolute spiritual meaning will be represented. The
167
sovereignty of the subjective in postmodernist allegory represents

one of the most powerful Romantic legacies in American literature.
And it is as a development of colonial Puritan hermeneutics that this
emphasis upon the subjective has acquired such power. The solitary
individual in direct communion with God through the inspired
Word of the Scriptures becomes, in American allegory, the alienated
observer of a world which resists definitive interpretation.
The indeterminacy which has always characterized allegory, from
its earliest uses in Hellenistic culture, has become in the twentieth
century an uncertainty that threatens to disable allegory altogether;
except, that is, for the special ability of allegory to describe the
complex and subtle ways in which subjectivity is constructed by
cultural discourses. Pre-Romantic allegory assumed that the narrative
protagonist exemplified the moral and spiritual standards of his
culture and that the completion of his quest would vindicate the
existing social order by bringing cultural ideologies and the inter-
pretation of the sacred book into a relationship of identity. In post-
modernist allegory, the protagonist's subjectivity and cultural
discourses are brought into a similar relationship but the analogy
now suggests coercion rather than innocent representation. Indeter-
minacy, even within the context of postmodernist allegory, can be
made to serve subversive purposes, undermining the still influential
mythology of a glorious New World destiny. So Barth's 'New
Tammany' can be represented as a redeemer nation, the site of
future 'Commencement', despite the narrative's representation of a
modern crisis of belief. The power of allegorical rhetoric to articu-
late the myth of America is undiminished so long as the indeter-
minacy of reference upon which allegory depends is sustained.
This indeterminacy is what lends allegory its power to respond
to the contingencies of cultural history as an ongoing process. Al-
legory has, since classical times, shown that interpretation has the
potential to respond to cultural threats, historical change and crises
of belief by renewing the authority of the sacred book - be that
myth, the Torah, the Testaments. Allegorical interpretation, by ex-
ploiting the referential gap opened up between the literal story and
the potential for significance, can supply dimensions of meaning
that sustain the relevance and authority of the sacred book for the
entire culture. The ability of the book to legislate between absolute
categories of experience, to authorize particular interpretations of
events and persons, to make discriminating moral and ethical judge-
ments, is ensured through the practice of allegorical interpretation.
Conclusion 169
And imaginative allegory achieves the same purposes through the

medium of narrative form. But that gap between literal images and
their meanings can also be exploited by a subversive intention which
seeks to expose the arbitrary nature of allegorical interpretation.
The desire for absolute knowledge is served by the arbitrary attri-
bution of meaning which is at the heart of allegorism. Exposure of
this basic arbitrariness, which is usually disguised by allegory's
claim upon the interpreter's orthodox religious belief or faith, a
claim supported by allegory's sustained allusion to the sacred book,
is sufficient to defeat the assumption that allegory can indeed provide
access to absolute knowledge. And it is in terms of such an expo-
sure that post-Romantic allegory has articulated its dissent from the
orthodox view of America's exceptional spiritual destiny.
From the national mythology which colonial Puritans constructed
through typological interpretation, there has developed an entire
tradition of American allegorism. The Puritans looked forward into
America's future but they also looked backwards, towards the
European culture they were seeking to transplant and then to perfect
on American soil. They took the allegorical rhetoric which described
the salvation of chosen individuals, visible saints, and applied that
rhetoric to an entire continent and an entire people. Not even among
the contemporaries of the first settlers was this vision of America
unanimous: there were among the first generation of colonists those
who expressed a radical dissent from the orthodox view. These
dissenters did not reject the allegorical interpretation of New World
history but they disagreed upon the style of allegory which should
be used for such an interpretation. Non-Separating congregationalists
like Roger Williams argued that the promises of the Old Testament
had been fulfilled by Christ, that the spiritual meaning of the literal
Testament had been discovered through a style of allegorical inter-
pretation akin to that practised by Hellenistic exegetes. Separatists,
like John Winthrop and John Cotton, argued from the standpoint of
Pauline typology that the events of the New Testament fulfilled the
promises of the Old Testament but, further, that they also foreshad-
owed the future salvation of God's visible saints and His 'citie upon
a hill'.
The sheer variety of allegorical styles has created complications
and conflicts throughout the history of allegory. Allegory is a style
of discourse remarkable for its mixed nature. But at the heart of
allegory is the sustained concern with the problematics of interpre-
tation: the spiritual, ideological, historical, moral and existential
implications of interpretation and the consequences of interpretation

for the individual subject and the wider, even global, community.
The capacity of allegory to mythologize, on the one hand, and then
to deconstruct its own mythology, on the other, testifies to its indeter-
minate nature. Yet this indeterminacy has empowered allegory, as
allegory has empowered so many of its users, to intervene in the
most crucial debates that have shaped the course of the New World's
destiny.
Notes
1 Allegory in the Old World
1. See also my Rereading Allegory: A Narrative Approach to Genre (New

York: St. Martin's Press, 1994; London: Macmillan, 1995), Phillip
Rollinson, Classical Theories of Allegory and Christian Culture (Pitts-
burgh & Brighton: Duquesne University Press & Harvester Press,
1981), and Jon Whitman, Allegory: The Dynamics of an Ancient and
Medieval Technique (New York & Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1987).
2. On Metrodorus, see J. Geffcken, 'Allegory, Allegorical Interpreta-
tion', in James Hastings (ed.), Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics (New
York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1908), p. 328. See also Phillip Rollinson,
op. cit.; Rudolphe Pfeiffer, History of Classical Scholarship: From the
Beginnings to the End of the Hellenistic Age (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1968); and Edwin Hatch, The Influence of Greek Ideas and Usages Upon
the Christian Church (London: Williams & Norgate, 1891).
3. On the details of Cicero's analysis of allegorical rhetoric, see J.
Geffcken, op. cit. and Phillip Rollinson, op. cit.
4. Edwin Hatch, op. cit., p. 69.
5. Philo Judaeus, de migr. Abr. I. 450, cited by Geffcken, op. cit., p. 329.
6. Philo Judaeus, de Jos. II. 46, cited by Geffcken, op. cit.
7. Here we see the origin of later Christian speculation about the number
and nature of allegorically encoded 'levels' of meaning which finally
became institutionalized in the medieval distich - 'Littera gesta docet,
quid credas allegorica, / Moralis quid agas, quo tendas anagogia' -
which prescribed a 'fourfold' approach to figurative meaning.
8. See W. J. Burghardt, 'On Early Christian Exegesis', Theological Studies,
11 (1950), pp. 96-8.
9. Rabbi Dr H. Freeman and Maurice Simon (trans, and ed.), Midrash
Rabbah, 10 vols (1939,3rd imprint, London, Soncino Press, 1961), Fore-
word, p. x.
10. Isadore Singer (ed.), The Jewish Encyclopedia (New York: KTAU Pub-
lishing House, n.d.), p. 580. See also M. Gertner, 'Midrash in the
New Testament', Journal of Semitic Studies, 7 (1962), pp. 267-70, 291.
11. J. M. Duncan Derrett, Jesus's Audience: The Social and Psychological
Environment in which He Worked (London: Darton, Longman & Todd,
1973), p. 110.
12. It is true that early patristic writers like Clement and Origen, whose
work is discussed a little later, were often more concerned with the
spirit than the letter of scriptural history. However, they did not
disregard historical veracity in their exegesis of the multiple spiritual
significances represented by Scripture.
171
172 Notes
13. A. C. Charity, Events and their Afterlife: The Dialectics of Christian

Typology in the Bible and Dante (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1966), p. 199.
14. Henry Chadwick, Early Christian Thought and the Classical Tradition:
Studies in Justin, Clement and Origen (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966),
p. 16.
15. W. J. Burghardt, op. cit., p. 92.
16. J. L. McKenzie, 'A Chapter in the History of Spiritual Exegesis: Henri
de Lubac's Histoire et Esprit', Theological Studies, 12 (1951), p. 367.
17. Henry Chadwick, op. cit., p. 157.
18. Jacob's Well, An English Treatise on the Cleansing of Man's Conscience,
ed. Arthur Brandeis. Early English Text Society (London: Kegan Paul,
Trench, Trubner & Co., 1900).
19. See George Owst, Literature and Pulpit in Medieval England (1933, rpt
Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1966), esp. Chapter 2, 'Scripture and Allegory'.
20. John Cotton, Gods Mercie Mixed with His Justice or His Peoples Deliv-
erance in Times of Danger (1641), ed. Everett Emerson (1958, rpt New
York: Scholars' Facsimiles and Reprints, 1977), pp. 3-13.
21. Joshua Moody, Souldiery Spiritualized, Or the Christian Souldier Or-
derly, and Strenuously Engaged in the Spiritual Wane (1674), in Perry
Miller and Thomas H. Johnson (ed.), The Puritans: A Sourcebook of
their Writings, 2 vols (1938, rev. edn, New York: Evanston & London,
Harper & Row, 1963), I, pp. 367-8.
22. Prudentius, Psychomachia, trans. H. J. Thomson, Loeb Classical Lib-
rary (1949, rpt. London & Cambridge, Mass.: Heinemann & Harvard
University Press, 1962), pp. 277-8.
23. For a more detailed discussion of this point see Rereading Allegory,
op. cit., pp. 139-41.
24. William Langland, The Vision of Piers the Plowman: A Complete Edition
of the B-Text, ed. A. V. C. Schmidt (1978, rpt. London & Melbourne:
Dent, 1984), XIX. 83.
25. Jon Whitman, Allegory, op. cit., p. 79.
26. On the construction of a Tudor mythology which provided an im-
portant precedent for the New World Puritans and their develop-
ment of a mythology of American 'exceptionalism' see Frank
Kermode, Shakespeare, Spenser, Donne: Renaissance Essays (London:
Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1971) and my Rereading Allegory, op. cit.,
p. 99.
27. See James Samuel Preus, From Shadoiv to Promise: Old Testament Inter-
pretation from Augustine to the Young Luther (Cambridge, Mass.:
Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1969), pp. 55-8.
28. Nathaniel Hawthorne, 'Young Goodman Brown', (1846) in Michael J.
Colacurcio (ed.), Selected Tales and Sketches of Nathaniel Hawthorne
(New York: Viking Penguin, 1987), p. 134.
29. Nathaniel Hawthorne, 'Earth's Holocaust', in Colacurcio, ibid., p. 348.
30. Nathaniel Hawthorne, "The Celestial Railroad', (1846) in Colacurcio,
ibid., p. 318.
31. Nathaniel Hawthorne, 'The Gray Champion', (1837) in Colacurcio,
ibid., p. 132.
Notes 173
2 Allegory in Colonial New England

1. Harry S. Stout, The New England Soul: Preaching and Religious Culture
in Colonial New England (New York & Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1986); Ann Kibbey, The Interpretation of Material Shapes in Pu-
ritanism: A Study of Rhetoric, Prejudice, and Violence (Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1986). See also Teresa Toulouse, The Art of
Prophesying: New England Sermons and the Shaping of Belief (Athens &
London: University of Georgia Press, 1987).
2. Kibbey, op. cit., pp. 23-4.
3. See, particularly, Sacvan Bercovitch, The Puritan Origins of the Ameri-
can Self (New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 1975); The
American Jeremiad (Madison & London: University of Wisconsin Press,
1978); and Bercovitch (ed.), The American Puritan Imagination: Essays
in Revaluation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974). Of
Perry Miller's most important works, see The New England Mind: The
Seventeenth Century (New York: Macmillan, 1939); The New England
Mind: From Colony to Province (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univer-
sity Press, 1953) and Errand into the Wilderness (1956, rpt Cambridge,
Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1964).
4. Philip Gura, A Glimpse of Sion's Glory: Puritan Radicalism in New
England, 1620-1660 (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press,
1984), p. 11.
5. A. C. Charity, Events and Their Afterlife: The Dialectics of Christian
Typology in the Bible and Dante (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1966).
6. Stephen Fender, American Literature in Context, 1:1620-1830 (London
& New York: Methuen, 1983), p. 49.
7. Larzer Ziff (ed.), John Cotton on the Churches of New England (Cam-
bridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1968),
p. 4.
8. Robert Cushman, 'Bradford and Winslow's Journal' (1621), XVI, re-
printed in Alexander Young (ed.), Chronicles of the Pilgrim Fathers of
the Colony of Plymouth, 1602-1625 (1841, rpt New York: Da Capo
Press, 1971), p. 241.
9. Robert Cushman, 'Cushman's Discourse: Of the State of the Colony,
and the need of Public Spirit in the Colonists', reprinted in Chronicles
of the Pilgrim Fathers, ibid., p. 268.
10. Roger Williams, 'Mr. Cotton's Letter Lately Printed, Examined and
Answered', in Perry Miller (ed.), The Complete Writings of Roger
Williams (New York: Russell & Russell, 1963), p. 360. Future refer-
ences are given in the text.
11. Roger Williams, "The Bloudy Tenent of Persecution, for Cause of
Conscience discussed, in A Conference betweene TRUTH and PEACE,
who, In all tender Affection, present to the High Court of Parliament,
(as the Result of their Discourse) these, (amongst other Passages) of
highest consideration', Complete Writings, op. cit., pp. 160-1.
12. Edmund S. Morgan, Roger Williams: The Church and the State (New
York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1967), pp. 137-42.
174 Notes
13. John Cotton, 'The Bloody Tenent Washed and Made White in the
Blood of the Lamb', (1647). Reprinted in Alan Heimert & Andrew
Delbanco (eds), The Puritans in America: A Narrative Anthology
(Cambridge, Mass. & London: Harvard University Press, 1985), pp.
203-4.
14. John Cotton on the Churches of New England, op. cit., pp. 57, 68.
15. Thomas Hooker, 'The Application of Redemption by the Effectual
Work of the Word and Spirit of Christ for the Bringing Home of Lost
Sinners to God', reprinted in The New England Way, A Library of
American Puritan Writings, vol. 12 (New York, AMS Press, n.d.).
16. Samuel Danforth, 'A Brief Recognition of New England's Errand
into the Wilderness', reprinted in A. W. Plumstead (ed.), The Wall and
the Garden: Selected Massachusetts Election Sermons, 1670-1775 (Minne-
apolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1968), p. 70.
17. John Cotton, "The Keys of the Kingdom of Heaven', in John Cotton on
the Churches of New England, op. cit., p. 82.
3 Captivity Narratives: Mary Rowlandson, Harriet Jacobs and

the Rhetoric of Exceptionalism
1. Think of later captivity narratives such as James Fenimore Cooper's

The Last of the Mohicans (1826) and classic Western films such as John
Ford's The Searchers. The imagery of bondage motivates the impor-
tant genre of slave narratives, exemplified by such works as Frederick
Douglass's Life of an American Slave and Harriet Jacobs's Incidents in
the Life of a Slave Girl (discussed below). The literary use of this kind
of imagery has been developed in the work of black writers in the
twentieth century, like Richard Wright's autobiographical narrative
Black Boy, Ralph Ellison's novel Invisible Man, and Toni Morrison's
return to the form of the female slave narrative, Beloved, all of which
texts take as their controlling images the experience of physical and
psychological imprisonment.
2. Richard Slotkin, Regeneration Through Violence: The Mythology of the
American Frontier, 1600-1800 (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan Univer-
sity Press, 1973) and Annette Kolodny, The Land Before Her: Fantasy
and Experience of the American Frontiers, 1630-1860 (Chapel Hill &
London: University of North Carolina Press, 1984). See also Roy
Harvey Pearce, Savagism and Civilization: A Study of the Indian and the
American Mind (1953, rev. edn, Berkeley, Los Angeles & London:
University of California Press, 1988).
3. Mary Rowlandson, "The Sovereignty and Goodness of God' in Alden
T. Vaughn & Edward W. Clark (ed.), Puritans Among the Indians: Ac-
counts of Captivity and Redemption, 1676-1724 (Cambridge, Mass. &
London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1981), p. 35.
Future references are given in the text.
4. Annette Kolodny, op. cit., p. 19.
5. Ibid., p. 21.
6. Alden T. Vaughn & Edward W. Clark (ed.), op. cit., p. 6.
Notes 175
7. This point, often made by commentators, is discussed in some detail

by Vaughn and Clark, ibid.
8. Hannah Swarton, 'A Narrative of Hannah Swarton Containing Won-
derful Passages Relating to her Captivity and Deliverance, Related
by Cotton Mather', in Alden T. Vaughn & Edward W. Clark (ed.),
op. cit., pp. 147-57.
9. 'A Sermon of the possibility of God's forsaking a people, that have
been visibly near and dear to him, together with the misery of a
people thus forsaken', preached by Mr Joseph Rowlandson, Novem-
ber 1678, was appended to the first edition of Mrs Rowlandson's
narrative, no complete copies of which survive. Both Mary
Rowlandson and Hannah Dustan stress that their stories have been
published for the glory of God and the benefit of those spiritually
afflicted with doubt. The subtitle of the second edition of The Sover-
eignty and Goodness of God describes the narrative as 'Commended by
her, to all that desires to know the Lords doings to, and dealings
with Her'. See Vaughn & Clark, op. cit., p. 32 and Annette Kolodny,
op. cit., p. 18.
10. Houston A. Baker, Jr., 'Autobiographical Acts and the Southern Slave'
in Charles T. Davis & Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (ed.), The Slave's Narrative
(Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press, 1985), pp. 242-61.
11. Harriet A. Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself,
ed. Jean Fagan Yellin (Cambridge, Mass. & London: Harvard Univer-
sity Press, 1987), p. 1. Future references are given in the text.
12. William L. Andrews, "The First Fifty Years of the Slave Narrative:
1760-1810', in John Sekora & Darwin T. Turner (ed.), The Art of Slave
Narrative: Original Essays in Criticism and Theory (Western Illinois
University, 1982), p. 13.
13. Annette Niemtzow, "The Problematic of Self in Autobiography: The
Case of the Slave Narrative' in Sekora and Turner, ed., ibid., pp. 96-
109.
14. Mary Helen Washington, Invented Lives: Narratives of Black Women,
1860-1960 (1987, rpt London: Virago, 1989). A similar argument,
though less developed, is sketched by Frances Smith Foster in Wit-
nessing Slavery: The Development of Ante-bellum Slave Narratives
(Westport, Conn. & London: Greenwood, 1979). Foster points to the
conflict between the personal and political (abolitionist) dimensions
of Jacobs's life story which she sees as an unresolved tension be-
tween self history and case history.
15. Valerie Smith, Self-Discovery and Authority in Afro-American Narrative
(Cambridge, Mass., & London: Harvard University Press, 1987).
16. Valerie Smith, ibid., p. 30.
17. Houston A. Baker, Jr., Blues, Ideology and Afro-American Literature: A
Vernacular Theory (Chicago & London: University of Chicago Press, 1984).
4 Allegory and American Romanticism

1. See, for example, Edwin Honig, Dark Conceit: The Making of Allegory
(1959, rpt New York: Oxford University Press, 1966), Angus Fletcher,
176 Notes
Allegory: The Theory of a Symbolic Mode (Ithaca: Cornell University

Press, 1964) and Paul de Man, Allegories of Reading: Figural Language
in Rousseau, Nietzsche, Rilke and Proust (New Haven & London: Yale
University Press, 1979) whose work is discussed in Chapter 7 below.
2. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Statesman's Manual (1816), in R. J. White
(ed.), The Collected Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Vol. 6: The Lay
Sermons. Bollingen Series LXXV (London & Princeton: Routledge &
Kegan Paul, Princeton University Press, 1972), p. 30.
3. Ibid., p. 30.
4. Ibid., p. 31.
5. Ralph Waldo Emerson, 'The Over-Soul' (1841), in Joseph Slater, Al-
fred R. Ferguson and Jean Ferguson Carr, (eds), The Collected Works
of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Vol. II: Essays, First Series (Cambridge, Mass.
& London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1979),
p. 160. It should be noted that the 'cultural crisis' which provides the
context for American Romanticism is motivated not only by the rise
of subjectivism but was influenced by other historical trends such as
the development of capitalism, the rise of biblical criticism, and the
increasing authority of natural science which emphasized the critical
nature of contemporary cultural conditions in the perception of
American Romantic thinkers and writers.
6. Ralph Waldo Emerson, "The Poet' (1844), in Joseph Slater, Alfred R.
Ferguson and Jean Ferguson Carr (eds), The Collected Works of Ralph
Waldo Emerson, Vol. Ill: Essays, Second Series (Cambridge, Mass. &
London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1983), p. 5.
7. Herman Melville, Moby Dick, or The Whale (1851, rpt London & Ox-
ford: Oxford University Press, 1929), p. 222. Future references are
given in the text.
8. Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter (1850), in Nathaniel Hawthorne:
The Novels (Ohio University Press, 1968, rpt New York: Library of
America, 1983), p. 158. Future references are given in the text.
9. Herman Melville, The Confidence-Man, His Masquerade (1857, rpt New
York: Signet, 1964), p. 165. Future references are given in the text.
10. R. W. B. Lewis, Trials of the Word: Essays in American Literature and the
Humanist Tradition (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1965), p. 75.
11. Nathaniel Hawthorne, "The Birth-Mark' (1846), in Michael J. Cola-
curcio (ed.), Selected Tales and Sketches (New York: Viking Penguin,
1987), p. 259. Future references are given in the text.
12. Herman Melville, Pierre or, the Ambiguities (1852, rpt New York &
London: Grove Press and Evergreen Books, 1957), p. 58. Future ref-
erences are given in the text.
13. Herman Melville, Mardi and a Voyage Thither, ed. Harrison Hayford,
Hershel Parker, G. Thomas Tanselle (1849, rpt Evanston & Chicago:
Northwestern University Press & The Newberry Library, 1970). Fu-
ture references are given in the text.
14. Henry James, 'Early Writings', in James Mclntosh (ed.), Nathaniel
Hawthorne's Early Tales (New York & London: W. W. Norton & Co.,
1987), p. 354.
Notes 177
15. Edgar Allan Poe, 'Tale Writing - Nathaniel Hawthorne', Godei/s Lady's
Book, November 1847, rpt Nathaniel Hawthorne's Early Tales, ibid., p.
145. Future references are given in the text.
16. Arthur Cleveland Coxe, "The Writings of Hawthorne', Church Re-
view, January 1851, in J. Donald Crowley (ed.), Hawthorne: The Critical
Heritage (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1970), p. 181.
17. Nathaniel Hawthorne, Twice-Told Tales (1837), in The Centenary Edi-
tion of the Works of Nathaniel Hawthorne, Vol. IX (Ohio State Univer-
sity Press, 1974), p. 6.
18. Nathaniel Hawthorne, The House of the Seven Gables (1851), in The
Centenary Edition of the Works of Nathaniel Hawthorne, Vol. II (Ohio
State University Press, 1964), p. 3.
19. Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Blithedale Romance (1852), in The Centenary
Edition of the Works of Nathaniel Hawthorne, Vol. Ill (Ohio State Uni-
versity Press, 1965), pp. 1-2.
20. Frank Kermode, 'Hawthorne's Modernity', Partisan Review, XLI. 3
(1974), p. 429.
21. Ibid., p. 436.
5 Nathaniel Hawthorne's Rappaccini's Daughter and the Sov-

ereignty of the Self
1. Nathaniel Hawthorne, Mosses from an Old Manse (1846), in The Cen-
tenary Edition of the Works of Nathaniel Haivthorne (Ohio State Univer-
sity Press, 1974), p. 91. Future references are given in the text.
2. Joel Fineman, "The Structure of Allegorical Desire', October, 12 (Spring
1980), p. 60.
3. Paul de Man, Allegories of Reading: Figural Language in Rousseau,
Nietzsche, Rilke and Proust (New Haven & London: Yale University
Press, 1979), p. 205.
4. See Edwin Honig, Dark Conceit: The Making of Allegory (1959, rpt New
York: Oxford University Press, 1966), pp. 71-3.
5. For this suggestion I am indebted to Stephen Fender.
6. Plato, Symposium, trans. W. Hamilton (1951, rpt Harmondsworth:
Penguin, 1967), 205e.
7. Plato, The Republic of Plato, trans. Francis MacDonald Comford (1941,
rpt Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1961), p. XXIII. vi. 508.
8. See Aristotle's Secretum Secretorum, Ch. 28 and also the Gesta
Romanorum, Tale XI 'Of the Poison of Sin', for fables which approxi-
mate Baglioni's description. The allegorical narratives of the Gesta
are predicated upon a direct, one-to-one correspondence between
the sign and its referent, such as Giovanni anticipates.
9. Symposium, op. cit., 212b.
10. Ibid., 211a.
11. Plato, Phaedrus, trans. R. Hackforth (Cambridge: Cambridge Univer-
sity Press, 1952), 250d.
12. Ibid., 248b.
178 Notes
13. Symposium, op.cit., 203b.

14. 'And Adam called his wife's name Eve; because she was the mother
of all living' (Genesis 3:20).
15. John Milton, Paradise Lost, in Douglas Bush (ed.), Milton: Poetical Works
(London & Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1966), Book IX, 11. 954-
5.
16. Baynard Cowan, Exiled Waters: Melville and the Crisis of Allegory (Ba-
ton Rouge & London: Louisiana State University Press, 1982), p. 35.
17. For a detailed discussion of the allegorical nature of Thomas
Pynchon's work, see my monograph The Postmodernist Allegories of
Thomas Pynchon (London & Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1991).
6 The Fate of Allegory in the Twentieth Century

1. Edwin Honig, Dark Conceit: The Making of Allegory (1959, rpt New
York: Oxford University Press, 1966), p. 85.
2. Ibid., p. 181.
3. Gay Clifford, The Transformations of Allegory (London: Routledge &
Kegan Paul, 1974), p. 43.
4. Honig, op. cit.
5. Angus Fletcher, Allegory: The Theory of a Symbolic Mode (Ithaca: Cornell
University Press, 1964), p. 143.
6. Ibid., p. 21.
7. Ibid., p. 307.
8. Heinz Politzer, Franz Kafka: Parable and Paradox (Ithaca: Cornell Uni-
versity Press, 1962), p. 67.
9. Honig, op. cit., p. 65.
10. Maureen Quilligan, 'Allegory, Allegoresis, and the De-allegorization
of Language', in Morton W. Bloomfield (ed.), Allegory, Myth and Symbol
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1981), pp. 163-86; The
Language of Allegory: Defining the Genre (Ithaca: Cornell University
Press, 1979).
11. Paul de Man, "The Rhetoric of Temporality', in Blindness and Insight:
Essays in the Rhetoric of Contemporary Criticism, 2nd edn, rev. (1971,
rpt London: Methuen, 1983), pp. 187-228.
12. Ibid., p. 207.
13. Ibid., p. 207.
14. Murray Krieger, 'A Waking Dream: The Symbolic Alternative to Al-
legory', in Morton W. Bloomfield (ed.), Allegory, Myth and Symbol,
op. cit., pp. 1-22.
7 John Barth's Giles Goat-Boy and Post-Romantic Allegory
1. Paul de Man, 'Pascal's Allegory of Persuasion', in Stephen Greenblatt

(ed.), Allegory and Representation (Baltimore, Johns Hopkins Univer-
sity Press, 1981), p. 1.
2. Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy, trans. Dorothy L. Sayers & Barbara
Reynolds (1962, rpt Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1969), 'Paradiso', Canto
XXXIII, 11. 139-45.
Notes 179
3. Michel Foucault, The Order of Things: An Archeology of the Human

Sciences (1970, rpt New York: Random House, 1973), p. 64.
4. Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology, trans. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976), pp. 144-5.
5. Ibid., p. 155.
6. John Barth, Giles Goat-Boy (1966, rpt London: Granada, 1981), p. 41.
Future page references will be given parenthetically in the text.
7. Robert Scholes, The Fabulators (New York: Oxford University Press,
1967).
8. Ibid., p. 147.
9. Op. cit., Taradiso', XXXIII, 11. 82-90.
10. Op. cit., pp. 33-4.
11. Op. cit., p. 145.
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Index
Alighieri, Dante, 106, 140, 146, 147, 79, 82, 84, 93, 97, 117-19, 146,
148, 160, 163 149, 161, 164, 168
The Divine Comedy, 117-18, 119, Bradford, William, 41
120, 145, 149, 164 Brent, Linda, see Harriet Jacobs
allegory, Bunyan, John, 33, 35, 36
Christian, 7, 18, 21, 22, 27, 30, The Pilgrim's Progress, 33, 35
33, 35, 123
classical, 7, 17, 20, 21, 22, 27, 30, captivity narrative, 9, 10, 58-81,
123 84
in colonial New England, 38-70 Castle, The, 129-30
European, 6-37 Celsus, 20
Jewish, 14, 18, 20, 21, 30 Charity, A. C, 18-19, 41
Protestant, 1, 33, 35 Chaucer, Geoffrey, 25, 92
Romantic, 120 Christianity, 5, 6, 11, 20, 23, 72, 85,
twentieth-century, 122-44 95, 96, 97, 98, 128, 146
see also midrash Church, the, 8, 21, 29, 32, 76, 97
allusion, 14, 17, 117, 119, 129, 149 Cicero, 14
America, Clark, Edward W., 67
national identity, 2-3, 11, 12, 37, Clifford, Gay, 122, 128-9, 132-3,
38-45, 46, 49, 52, 57, 68, 69, 135
76, 78, 81, 167, 170 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 11,
see also exceptionalism 82-3, 137
analogy, 44, 46, 53,' 93, 107, 128, Confidence-Man, The, 91-3, 120
147, 148, 149, 163, 165, 168 Congregationalism, 3, 9, 39, 40,
Andrews, William, 74 42-9 passim, 51-5 passim, 89,
Antinomian Controversy, the, 55 169
Apologists, the, 7, 19 non-Separating, 10, 53
aporia, 5, 8, 11, 84, 105, 115, 160, Separating, 43, 44
164, 167 see also Puritans
Augustine of Hippo, St, 31 Cotton, John, 24, 38-9, 42, 45,
autobiography, 70 49-53, 55-6, 169
slave narrative, see main entry 'A Sermon Delivered at Salem,
June 1636', 51-2
Baker, Houston A., 70, 80 God's Mercie Mixed luith His
Barth, John, 9, 12, 144, 168 Justice, 24
The End of the Road, 142-3, 158 'The Bloudy Tenent Washed
Giles, Goat-Boy, 12, 120, 140-2, and Made White in the
145-66, 167 Blood of the Lamb', 49
Bercovitch, Sacvan, 5, 39-40, 53, covenant, federal, 39, 62, 64
56 Coxe, Arthur Cleveland, 99
Bible, 1, 9, 10, 17, 22-7 passim, 36, Crying of Lot 49, The, 120, 143-4
39, 40, 43, 48, 49, 51, 58, 59, Culler, Jonathan, 122, 137-8
60-1, 65, 66, 71, 72, 73, 77, 78, Cushman, Robert, 40, 42, 43, 44
190
Index 191
Danforth, Samuel, 53, 54 Gnosticism, 20

Darwin, Charles, 149 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 137
de Lorris, Guillaume, 106 Gravity's Rainbow, 120
de Man, Paul, 105-6, 122, 138-40, Great Migration, the, 41-2, 45
165 Gura, Philip, 5, 40
de Meun, Jean, 106
Deconstruction, 5, 105, 106, 116, Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 1, 4, 11-12,
121, 122, 165, 170 33, 34, 35, 36-7, 84-5, 90,
Derrett, J. Duncan, 17 101-2, 167
Derrida, Jacques, 147 'Earth's Holocaust', 34-5
supplement, the, 147-8 prefaces, 99-101
didacticism, 125 Rappaccini's Daughter, 11, 12,
Divine Comedy, The, 117-18, 119, 103-21
120, 145, 149, 164 'The Birth-Mark', 94-5
Dustan, Hannah, 69 'The Celestial Railroad', 35-6
'The Gray Champion', 36
Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 4, 11-12, The Scarlet Letter, 85, 88-90, 99,
83-5, 86-7 106, 120
End of the Road, The, 142-3, 158 'Young Goodman Brown', 33-4
exceptionalism, 2, 5, 9, 10, 11, 12, Hellenism, 5, 14, 15
38, 40, 52, 53, 55, 56-7, 58-81, hero, allegorical, 126-9, 130, 131-2,
167 134, 140, 142, 149, 154
exegesis, Hesiod, 1, 13
biblical, 1, 6, 82 Homer, 1, 6, 13, 14, 15
classical, 1, 6, 16, 169 homily, 8, 16, 23-6, 126
Greek, 9 Honig, Edwin, 122, 125, 127-8,
patristic, 26, 32, 128 129, 135, 145
Protestant, 5, 32, 90 Hooker, Thomas, 53
rabbinical, 16 Hutchinson, Anne, 10, 40, 55, 56
Roman, 9
see also midrash idealism, 103, 121
imagery, 8, 24, 25, 30, 31, 33, 34,
fable, 112 35, 38, 47, 51, 53, 60, 73, 88,
Fender, Stephen, 41 104, 119, 120, 123, 124, 125,
Fineman, Joel, 104 126, 128, 130, 131, 135, 137,
Fletcher, Angus, 122, 125, 130-3, 138, 139, 141, 142, 144, 169
145 dream artifice, 126
Foucault, Michel, 147, 164 Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl,
Franklin, Benjamin, 9 71-80
Freud, Sigmund, 132 Indians, 59, 61, 62, 63, 64, 66, 67
Frye, Northrop, 122, 123, 133 Narrangansett, 58
interpretation, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12,
gender, 10, 72-3, 74 13-22, 54, 63, 86, 91, 93, 94,
genius, 9, 83 96, 98, 99, 100, 101-2, 104,
genre, 1, 3, 6, 12, 22, 23, 70, 74, 110, 112, 113, 116, 119, 123,
103, 104, 121, 122, 124, 133, 124, 127, 128, 130, 133, 134,
138, 148 136, 140, 144, 146, 151, 152,
Giles, Goat-Boy, 12, 120, 140-2, 155, 156, 157, 167, 168, 169,
145-66, 167 170
192 Index
interpretation - continued Metrodorus of Lampsacus, 13

and allegorical literature, 22-37 midrash, 16-18, 24
Catholic, 19 aggadah, 16
classical, 23 halakah, 16
Protestant, 19, 119 millenialism, 9, 34-5, 44, 49, 52,
93,98
Jacob's Well, 23-4 Miller, Perry, 5, 40, 56
Jacobs, Harriet, 10, 11, 70-81, 167 Milton, John, 117
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Paradise Lost, 117, 118-19
Girl, 71-80 Moby Dick, 85-8
James, Henry, 99 Modernism, 143
Judaism, 5, 6 Moody, Joshua, 24
Artillery Sermon, 1674, 24-5
Kafka, Franz, 136, 140, 144 Morgan, Edmund, 48
Metamorphosis, 134-6 myth, 6, 13, 14, 40, 46, 69, 71, 76,
The Castle, 129-30 106, 122, 125, 126, 127, 131,
Kermode, Frank, 101 132, 133, 139, 168, 170
Kibbey, Anne, 5, 39, 56
Kolodny, Annette, 58, 60 Niemtzow, Annette, 79
Krieger, Murray, 139 nostalgia, 105, 114, 121
Langland, William, 28, 29
Piers Plowman, 28-30 Origen, of Alexandria, 20-2, 26
language, 31, 38, 39, 72, 83, 84, 92, Periarchon, 20
93, 104, 108, 114, 115, 120, 121, Owst, George, 24
132, 137, 138, 139, 147, 163,
165, 166 Paradise Lost, 117, 118-19
Lewis, R. W. B., 93 Paul, St, 18, 19, 21, 25, 169
Lowance, Mason, 5 pedagogy, 13
Pentateuch, 15
manifest destiny, 2 personification, 26, 28, 29, 88, 96,
Mardi, and a Voyage Thither, 98-9 126
Martyr, Justine, 19 Philo Judeus, 6, 7, 14-16, 20
Massachusetts Bay colony, 38-57 Pierre, or The Ambiguities, 95-8
Mather, Cotton, 41, 69 Piers Plowtnan, 28-30
Mather, Increase, 41 Pilgrim's Progress, The, 33, 35
Melville, Herman, 1, 4, 11-12, Plato, 113, 116, 120
84-5, 90 Phaedrus, 109, 114
Mardi, and a Voyage Thither, 98-9 Republic, 111
Moby Dick, 85-8 Symposium, 109, 112
Pierre, or The Ambiguities, 95-8 Plymouth colony, 44
The Confidence-Man, 91-3, 120 Poe, Edgar Allan, 99
Metamorphosis, 134-6 Postmodernism, 1, 4, 9, 12, 140,
metaphor, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 56, 86, 142, 143, 144, 152, 167, 168
98, 99, 105, 106, 108, 109, 114, Post-structuralism, 1, 5, 122, 123,
115,116,117,119,120,135,141, 165
146, 150, 153, 159, 162, 165 Protestantism, 31, 32, 33
metonymy, 111, 112, 115, 118, 119, Prudentius, 25, 27
133, 148, 149, 164 Psychomachia, 25-8
Index 193
Puritans, 2, 6, 9, 10, 19, 34, 36-7, slavery, 10, 11, 70-81

38-70, 74, 84, 85, 88, 89, 90, and ideology of true
101, 119, 168, 169 womanhood, 79
autobiography, 9, 70, 74 sexual abuse under, 72-3, 74
captivity narative, see main Slotkin, Richard, 58
entry Smith, Valerie, 80
diaries, 9 Spenser, Edmund, 25, 106
jeremiad, 10, 53-4 Stoics, 13
providential history, 9 Stout, Harry S., 39, 52, 56
sermons, see main entry subjectivism, 9, 12, 52, 83-5, 88,
typology, see main entry 89, 90, 92, 94, 95, 99, 102, 107,
women, 10, 88 122, 128, 133, 144, 151, 167,
see also Massachusetts Bay 168
colony Swarton, Hannah, 68-9
Pynchon, Thomas, 9, 12, 140, 144 symbolism, 4, 5, 25, 43-4, 82-5,
Gravity's Rainbow, 120 • 95, 99, 100, 105, 110, 114, 116,
The Crying of Lot 49, 120, 122, 123, 126, 128, 131, 137,
143-4 138, 139, 144, 165
Quilligan, Maureen, 136-7 Torah, 1, 6, 16, 17, 168
Transcendentalism, 103, 104
Rappaccini's Daughter, 11, 12, 'true womanhood', ideology of, 79
103-21 Turner, Nat, 76
realism, 103, 121, 122, 131, 132, typology, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10, 12, 18-19,
133, 137, 142, 145, 145, 166 22, 27, 28, 29, 30, 32, 33, 35,
Reformation, 8, 32 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 55, 56, 58,
romance, the, 99-101 82, 84, 87, 88, 89, 90, 94, 98,
Romanticism, 4, 8, 9, 11, 12, 31, 105, 117, 118, 120, 121, 122,
82-102, 120, 121, 122, 128, 133, 123, 124, 125, 137, 139, 165,
137, 138, 168 169
Rowlandson, Mary, 10, 11, 73, 74, and allegory, 3
76 in captivity narrative, 59-64,
The Sovereigttty and Goodness of 84
God, 58-71 Puritan, 41-3, 44-54, 56-7, 101
in slave narrative, 73-4, 75-6,
Scarlet Letter, The, 85, 88-90, 99, 78, 80, 81
106, 120
Scholes, Robert, 150, 153, 165 Vaughn, Alden T., 67
Scripture, 7, 8, 11, 15, 17, 18-22,
28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 43, 48, Washington, Mary Helen, 79-80
49, 54, 56, 64, 67, 76, 77, 86, Whitman, Jon, 31
95, 161, 163, 168 Williams, Roger, 10, 38, 40, 42,
sentimental novel, 74, 79-80 45-53, 55, 56
sermons, 9, 24, 25, 27, 39, 52, 54, Winthrop, John, 41, 169
76 Wordsworth, William, 139
Shakespeare, William, 111
slave narrative, 70-81 Ziff, Larzer, 5, 40, 42

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(Studies in Literature and Religion) Deborah L Madsen - Allegory in America - From Puritanism To Postmodernism-Palgrave Macmillan LTD (1995)

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ALLEGORY IN AMERICA

STUDIES IN LITERATURE AND RELIGION

Studies in Literature and Religion is a major series of interdisciplinary titles,

Published titles include:

David Scott Arnold

First published in the United States of America 1996 by

© Deborah L. Madscn 1996

1 Allegory in the Old World 6

2 Allegory in Colonial New England 38

3 Captivity Narratives: Mary Rowlandson, Harriet

4 Allegory and American Romanticism 82

5 Nathaniel Hawthorne's Rappaccini's Daughter and the

6 The Fate of Allegory in the Twentieth Century 122

7 John Barth's Giles Goat-Boy and Post-Romantic

The first chapter offers a survey of the Old World models of

In the tradition of colonial dissidents, American Romantics such

in Hellenistic culture and the Christian compromise with Judaism,

In particular, classical and Christian allegory differ in the assump-

power of typology could be used for distinct ideological purposes

correct reading of the book. This emphasis upon the individual

The relevance of the Bible to the experience of migration and settle-

typological reference initially to describe her exclusion from the

Romantic subjectivism is addressed as part of a wider attack on the

MODELS OF ALLEGORICAL INTERPRETATION

The earliest recorded instances of allegorical interpretation reveal

upon the prescriptions of the interpreter. Sacred meaning was thus

to the relevance of that revelation for the development and spiritual

Encyclopedia as 'the exegetical amplification of a Biblical passage

returned from exile, the midrashic interpreters relied on faith to

One thing does not mean another in typology: it involves it, or

The early Christian writers, in Charity's view, use past events as a

found in 'the book of nature and also in the inner deliverances of

spiritual awareness. Correspondingly, the 'simple' man is edified

the two Testaments, the allegorical referent was determined from

THE DEVELOPMENT OF ALLEGORICAL LITERATURE

The incorporation of styles of interpretation that are known as

allegories instead tend to focus upon the difficulties inherent in the

The Lord takes care to make us spiritual in all our Imployments,

Sara's miraculous conception. These scriptural events are chosen as

Sara's angelic conception is seen as an image of the fertility of the

then dramatize the complexities involved in interpreting the biblical

interpretation. The personification, Conscience, explains to Will that

of interpretation) and not as typologically represented characters -

Referential unity is achieved among the narrative signs of Piers

The very basis for the figurative language of Scripture, Augustine

This is a very important point for the future development of

biblical exegesis, during the period of the Reformation. This shift

(represented by typologically significant images or characters, and

her to Heaven'.28 The diabolical figure who awaits Goodman Brown

a value that is identical to itself, a meaning that is transparent and

The pattern of typological repetition is seen to refer to the repetition

congruent with the ideology of liberal progressivism that Smooth-

a way that it promises and fulfils a secular potential that promises

of the nature of the colonized New World, a view which depended

the Massachusetts Bay theocracy to assert its authority and to estab-

have never been completely sublimated, despite the remarkable

the spirit which England was not'.6 As a divine justification for

political power. The claim to authority of both typology and Con-

wilderness of this earth until Christ should return to transform

reference. A similarly metaphoric style of rhetoric marks the writings

Williams makes appear absurd the typological imperative that

as well. This presumption, this usurpation of divine prerogative,

There is a Civil sword, called the Sword of Civill justice; which,