81-47595 Isbn 0-B018-2642-X

Copyright © 1981 by the English Institute All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America The Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore Maryland 21218 The Johns Hopkins Press Ltd., London Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data English Institute. Allegory and representation. (Selected papers from the English Institute; 1979-80, new ser., no. 5) 1. Allegories-Addresses, essays, lectures. 2. Arts-Addresses, essays, lectures. 1. Greenblatt, Stephen Jay. II. Tide. III. Series: Selected papers from the English Institute ; new ser., no....5. NX650.A44E5 700 81-47595 ISBN 0-B018-2642-X AACR2 27 The Structure of Allegorical Desire ~ Joel Fitleman that analysis itself, the critical response to allegory, rehearses the same wish and therefore embarks upon the same pilgrimage, so that The Structure of Allegorical Desire psychoanalysis, especially structural psychoanalysis, by which today we are obliged to mean Lacan, is not simply the analysis of, but the Mi7VLV a€L8e, 8ea, n17 extension and conclusion of, the classic allegorical tradition from which it derives-which is why psychoanalysis so readily assimilates ~ I mean my tide to be read backwards and forwards, its "of" the great archetypes of allegorical imagery into its discourse: the taken as objective and subjective genitive. On the one hand, I am labyrinths, the depths, the navels, the psychomachian hydraulics. concerned with the ways allegories begin and with the ends towards I want to argue that there is, for literary criticism, an historical which they tend. In general, this is the problem of allegorical narra importance in the fact that psychoanalysis founds its scientifidty on tive, primarily a temporal issue regarding the way allegories linearly the hermeneutic circle traced by its own desire to know, as in the unfold, but also, as has often been pointed out, a symbolic progress dream that begins psychoanalysis, Freud's dream of Irma's injection, that lends itself to spadal projection, as when the Temple translates whose wish is that its own interpretation be correct.! To the extent the Labyrinth, or the music of the spheres sounds the order of the . that psychoanalysis is the prevailing paradigm for critical inquiry stars. On the other hand, I am concerned with a specifically allegori today, it is precisely because The Interpretation of Dreams in this cal desire, a desire for allegory, that is implicit in the idea of struc way develops itself as the dream, and therefore as the desire, of ture itself and explicit in criticism that directs itself towards the interpretation itself. In thus basing itself on its own critical reflec structurality of literature. This is to say not only that the notion of tion, however, desire becomes in psychoanalysis, as in allegory, both structure, especially of literary structure, presupposes the same a theme and a structuring principle, and its psychology, its theory of system of multiply articulated levels as does that of allegory, but also the human, thus becomes, in the words of another and famously that the possibility of such coherently polysemic significance origi ambiguous genitive, the allegory of love, whereas its metapsychology, nates out of the same intention-what I call desire-as does allegorical its theory of itself, becomes the allegory of allegory. I am concerned narrative. with the logic, presumably the psycho-logic-etymologically, the I speak of desire in deference to the thematics of allegory and to logos of the soul-that in our literary tradition links allegory, inter describe the self-propelling, digressive impulse of allegorical move pretation, and desire each to each, and with what happens to inter ment: for example, the way the meandering Canterbury Tales begins pretation when its desire is no longer controllable by a figure. by setting the scene and establishing the atmosphere in which folk That there should be formal reciprocity between allegory and its properly "longen" to go on pilgrimages, that longing being motiva criticism is not surprising. Theoretical discussions of allegory regular tion for each pilgrim's journey to Canterbury, but also the way the ly begin by lamenting the breadth of the term and relating its com tales themselves set off towards the equally sacred center of their pass to the habit of mind that, as it is irritatedly put, sees allegory own allegorical space. I therefore psychoanalytically assume that the everywhere. Thus generalized, allegory rapidly acquires the status of movement of allegory, like the dreamwork, enacts a wish that deter trope of tropes, representative of the figurality of all language, of mines its progress-and, of course, the dream-vision is a characteristic the distance between signifier and signified, and, correlatively, the framing and opening device of allegory, a way of situating allegory response to allegory becomes representative of critical activity per in the mise en abyme opened up by the variety of cognate accusa se. As Frye says, "it is not often realized that all commentary is tives that dream a dream, or see a sight, or tell a tale. On the other allegorical interpretation, an attaching of ideas to the structure of hand, with this reference to psychoanalysis, I mean also to suggest 26 28 Joel Fineman The Structure of Allegorical Desire 29 poetic imagery "-as, indeed, Frye's comment demonstrates, in its out own exegetical tradition, it is significant that Philo, who was the presumption of global, archetypal structure, which is already allegori fust to employ an extensively allegorical mode of scriptural criticism, cization whatever purely literary claims he may make for it.2 Often, also the first to introduce the terms of negative theology into allegory will internalize this critical mood that it evokes, and this is theological discourse.8 Here there is a kind of euhemerism in reverse, what gives it its characteristically didactic and sententious tone, as with a God whose ineffability and incomprehensibility-knowable in Spenser's emblematic stanzas, or the way Chaucer's pilgrims, how as existent but not in essence-answers His embarrassingly anthro ever ironic the context, draw the exemplary morals of their own and pomorphic involvement in history, just as His essentially mysterious each other's tales, or the relation of the second half of the Roman de divinity explains the necessity for a revelation expressed through La Rose to the first, or, even more patently, the way EK's appendixes ftgUral extravagance. Again, with Philo we note a self-conscious and to The Shepheardes Calender or Eliot's pedantic footnotes to The sacralizing nostalgia in response to authoritative but in some sense Waste Land seem integral parts of the poems rather than gloss. This faded origins, whether they be historical (the disturbingly unphilo tendency on the part of allegory to read itself, for its theme to sophical account of the creation of the universe presented in Scrip dominate its narrative, or, as Frye says, to prescribe the direction of ture) or textual (the way Philo's commentary works at one inspired its commentary, suggests the formal or phenomenological affinities 9 of the genre with criticism.3 and translated remove from its original source). It is as though allegory were precisely that mode that makes up for the distance, or More historicall , we can note that allegory seems regularly to heals the gap, between the present and a disappearing past, which, surface in CrItical or polemica atmospheres, w en for po idca or without interpretation, would be otherwise irretrievable and fore metaphYSIcal reasons there IS somethmg that cannot be said. Plutarch closed, as, for example, the pseudo-hieroglyphology of Horapollo, -is generany mstanced as the [lrSt to subshtute a "AXrryopta for the whose magic, hermetic graphesis is developed just at that moment more usual V1rOVOW., and he does so in the double context of defend when the legibility of hieroglyphs is lost.10 ing poetry and demythologizing the gods. 4 In this he picks up the With the Patristics (leaving aside the exact proportion of Philonic protoallegorical tradition of euhemerism which goes back to the and Stoic influence) these allegoricizing perspectives and purposes third century B.C., or to Plato, or beyond that to the Pythagoreans, turn into the dogma that lies at the base of all medieval and renaissance and whose importance for literary theory is not so much its dis critical theory. Again allegory is directed to critical and polemical mantling of the pagan pantheon as, rather, the defenSively recupera ends, and again the motive to allegoricize emerges out of recuperative tive intention it displays towards authoritative texts whose literalism s originology. The old Testament is revived when interpreted as has failed. The dignity of Apollo is deflated, but the prestige of typologically predictive of the New Testament, and the Gospels Homer preserved, when the licentious intrigues of the gods are rein themselves receive the benefit of spiritualizing exegesis when the terpreted as philosophic, naturalistic, or scientific parables. apocalypse they prophesy is indefinitely deferred. Here, allegory This deployment of allegory in the service of established literary acquires what will be in our tradition its primarily intermediate posi tradition, a way of reviving prior literary authorities by making them tion between interpretative extremes: more figural than Montanist new through critical revision-for example, Ovid moralisee-forms literalism, for which the arrival of the Paraclete is already officially the basis of Edwin Honig's theory of allegorical conception,6 which announced by Scripture, and less recursively allusive than doceticiz has itself been forcefully revived and redeveloped in Harold Bloom's ing Gnosticism, for which history, Christ, and Truth itself are but more psychoanalytical (allegorical?) Anxiety of Influence. 7 In this discrete moments in an infinite series of suggestively unstable image. context, and relating more directly to the historical development of of images.

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