The Cambridge Companion to Allegory

Allegory is a vast subject, and its knotty history is daunting to students and even advanced scholars venturing outside their own historical specializations. This Companion will present, lucidly, systematically, and expertly, the various threads that comprise the allegorical tradition over its entire chronological range. Beginning with Greek antiquity, the volume shows how the earliest systems of allegory developed in poetry dealing with philosophy, mystical religion, and hermeneutics. Once the earliest histories and themes of the allegorical tradition have been presented, the volume turns to literary, intellectual, and cultural manifestations of allegory through the Middle Ages and Renaissance. The essays in the last section address literary and theoretical approaches to allegory in the modern era, from reactions to allegory in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to reevaluations of its power in the thought of the twentieth century and beyond.

Introduction Rita Copeland and Peter T. Struck; Part I. Ancient Foundations: 1. Early Greek allegory Dirk Obbink; 2. Hellenistic allegory and early imperial rhetoric Glenn W. Most; 3. Origen as theorist of allegory: Alexandrian contexts Daniel Boyarin; Part II. Philosophy, Theology, and Poetry 200 to 1200: 4. Allegory and ascent in Neoplatonism Peter T. Struck; 5. Allegory in Christian late antiquity Denys Turner; 6. Allegory in Islamic literatures Peter Heath; 7. Twelfth-century allegory: philosophy and imagination Jon Whitman; Part III. Literary Allegory: Philosophy and Figuration: 8. Allegory in the Roman de la Rose Kevin Brownlee; 9. Dante and allegory Albert R. Ascoli; 10. Medieval secular allegory: French and English Stephanie Gibbs Kamath and Rita Copeland; 11. Medieval religious allegory: French and English Nicolette Zeeman; 12. Renaissance allegory from Petrarch to Spenser Michael Murrin; 13. Protestant allegory Brian Cummings; 14. Allegorical drama Blair Hoxby; Part IV. The Fall and Rise of Allegory: 15. Romanticism's errant allegory Theresa M. Kelley; 16. American allegory Deborah L. Madsen; 17. Walter Benjamin's concept of allegory Howard Cagill; 18. Hermeneutics, deconstruction, allegory Steven Mailloux; 19. Allegory happens: allegory and the arts post-1960 Lynette Hunter.

Traces the development of allegory in the European and American tradition from antiquity to the modern era. The essays explore allegory as a literary practice in poetry and fiction, as a technique of interpreting sacred and philosophical texts, and as an important element of modern literary theory.

Rita Copeland is Professor of Classical Studies and English and Chair of Comparative Literature at the University of Pennsylvania.
Peter Struck is Associate Professor of Classical Studies and serves on the graduate faculties of Religious Studies and Comparative Literature at the University of Pennsylvania.