Theory and Interpretation of Narrative James Phelan, Peter J

THEORY AND INTERPRETATION OF NARRATIVE James Phelan, Peter J. Rabinowitz, and Robyn Warhol, Series Editors The Vitality of Allegory Figural Narrative in Modern and Contemporary Fiction GARY JOHNSON The Ohio State University Press • Columbus For Emily, Chase, and Madeleine Copyright © 2012 by The Ohio State University. All rights reserved. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Johnson, Gary, 1966– The vitality of allegory : figural narrative in modern and contemporary fiction / Gary Johnson. p. cm.—(Theory and interpretation of narrative) ISBN 978-0-8142-1182-3 (cloth : alk. paper)—ISBN 978-0-8142-9281-5 (cd) 1. Allegory. I. Title. II. Series: Theory and interpretation of narrative series. PN56.A5J64 2012 809'.915—dc23 2011040059 Cover design by Larry Nozik. Type set in Adobe Minion Pro. Printed by Thomson-Shore, Inc. The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials. ANSI Z39.48–1992. 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Contents Acknowledgments ix InTrOduction 1 ChAPTer 1 Strong Allegory: Shirley Jackson 33 ChAPTer 2 Weak Allegory: Kafka and a Carrot Named Coco 50 ChAPTer 3 embedded Allegory 79 Independent Embedded Allegory: Achebe and Kafka 82 dependent Embedded Allegory: Barth 99 Interdependent Embedded Allegory: Barth and Coetzee 106 ChAPTer 4 Thematic Allegory: Roth 129 ChAPTer 5 Ironic Allegory: Dante and Mann 149 ChAPTer 6 The Presence of Allegory: Barth Revisited 182 COnClUSIOn 193 Appendix “Click” by John Barth 199 Works Cited 227 Index 235 Acknowledgments THIS BOOK has evolved over more than a decade, so the list of people to whom I owe some debt of gratitude is long, too long, unfortunately, to fit in a reasonable acknowledgments section. There are, however, a number of individuals who have been especially helpful in advancing the work to this final stage, and I would like to thank them here. Andrew Ade, Eric Iversen, and Christine Tulley, all friends and insightful readers, provided helpful feedback on the introductory material. Their comments, suggestions, and encouragement are greatly appreciated. John McGowan, who was the first to recognize that a work that began as a theoretical approach to the concept of character probably had more poten- tial as a book about allegory, remains for me the ideal reader. For fifteen years John has helped me to recognize both the import of my own ideas and how to shape them into a coherent form. His mentorship has influenced me profoundly. During the summer of 2005, I had the good fortune to participate in a National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Seminar, “Narrative Theory: Rhetoric and Ethics in Fiction and Non-Fiction,” in Columbus, Ohio. Six weeks of focused reading and discussion proved to be a won- derful forum in which to test my ideas and to receive critical feedback from insightful colleagues. I am indebted to each of my fellow participants and to the seminar’s director, Jim Phelan. ix x • Acknowledgments Jim’s involvement with my project predates the seminar by about five years, and it likely would never have made it to this point without him. Jim’s own work on a rhetorical approach to narrative has had a clear influence on this book, but his kindness, his generosity, and his patience have been just as valuable to me and just as instrumental in the process of turning some very rough early ideas into a reasonable premise for a book. I take full responsi- bility for the imperfections in this book, but the fact that it exists as a book at all owes much to Jim. Readers for The Ohio State University Press—including Peter Rabi- nowitz, coeditor of the series Theory and Interpretation of Narrative—provided insightful comments and helpful recommendations. As a result, the final draft is, I think, much improved over what I had originally submitted. I am also grateful for an NEH Summer Stipend, which I received in 2006 and which afforded me time and funds to devote to this project. Of course, any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this book do not necessarily reflect those of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Finally, I want to acknowledge and thank my wife, Emily, and my two children, Chase and Madeleine. They inspire me every day. Earlier versions of several chapters appeared elsewhere in print, and I am grateful to those publishers for the permission to use that material here: “The Presence of Allegory: The Case of Philip Roth’s American Pastoral,” Narra- tive 12 (2004): 233–48; and “Death in Venice and the Aesthetic Correlative,” Journal of Modern Literature 27 (2004): 83–96. I am also grateful for permission from the University of Pittsburgh Press to reprint the Billy Collins poem “The Death of Allegory,” which originally appeared in book form in Questions about Angels (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1999), 13–14. “Click,” from The Book of Ten Nights by John Barth (copyright © 2004 by John Barth) is reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Pub- lishing Company. All rights reserved. I thank Houghton Mifflin for allowing me to reprint this story in the appendix. Introduction IN 1959 Edwin Honig wrote that “Opinion about allegory in literary histo- ries is fairly unanimous: most agree that it is dead but disagree about the date of its demise” (5). Nearly forty years later Theresa Kelley pronounced simi- larly on the fate of allegory: scholarly objections to allegory, “which become commonplace in English culture by the late seventeenth century, mark the end of [it] as a viable symbolic mode” (1). Even E. D. Hirsch has recently advised that “Allegory . has more or less gone away” (“Transhistorical” 551). By far the most entertaining obituary for allegory comes from the poet Billy Collins in “The Death of Allegory”: I am wondering what became of all those tall abstractions that used to pose, robed and statuesque, in paintings and parade about on the pages of the Renaissance displaying their capital letters like license plates. Truth cantering on a powerful horse, Chastity, eyes downcast, fluttering with veils. Each one was marble come to life, a thought in a coat, Courtesy bowing with one hand always extended, Villainy sharpening an instrument behind a wall, Reason with her crown and Constancy alert behind a helm. 1 2 • Introduction They are all retired now, consigned to a Florida for tropes. Justice is there standing by an open refrigerator. Valor lies in bed listening to the rain. Even Death has nothing to do but mend his cloak and hood, and all their props are locked away in a warehouse, hourglasses, globes, blindfolds and shackles. Even if you called them back, there are no places left for them to go, no Garden of Mirth or Bower of Bliss. The Valley of Forgiveness is lined with condominiums and chain saws are howling in the Forest of Despair. Here on the table near the window is a vase of peonies and next to it black binoculars and a money clip, exactly the kind of thing we now prefer, objects that sit quietly on a line in lower case, themselves and nothing more, a wheelbarrow, an empty mailbox, a razor blade resting in a glass ashtray. As for the others, the great ideas on horseback and the long-haired virtues in embroidered gowns, it looks as though they have traveled down that road you see on the final page of storybooks, the one that winds up a green hillside and disappears into an unseen valley where everyone must be fast asleep. (27–28) These thoughtful and entertaining obituaries notwithstanding, critics have never quite managed to retire allegory—or any particular instance of it. While it is certainly true that a very particular kind of didactic-religious- personification composition from the Middle Ages and the Renaissance has mostly faded from the best-seller lists and from our collective critical con- sciousness, to say more globally that allegory is dead is manifestly untrue, and Honig, Kelley, Hirsch, Collins, and others of their leaning understand of course that they greatly exaggerate the rumors of allegory’s death.1 They do so, I think, partly for rhetorical effect—there is something impressive about 1. Collins even has a poem in the same collection that revives one of those “tall abstractions” parading around in capital letters. In “The Lesson” Collins writes of “. History / snoring heavily on the couch. .” (6). Introduction • 3 breathing life into an entity previously thought dead—and partly to under- line a claim about the multiple meanings that inhere in the term “allegory”; it is perhaps dead if we only think of it as the kind of didactic composition peopled by upper-case abstractions, but not if we allow ourselves to recon- ceptualize, redefine, or rehabilitate it. In short, allegory has not died, despite the passage of centuries since its popular zenith and despite the attempts of a number of influential critics (most notably Coleridge) to kill it. Certainly no contemporary writers whom the academy values pen allegories of Christian salvation along the lines of The Pilgrim’s Progress or The Divine Comedy, but even so these earlier works survive and continue to make themselves heard in the grand conversation of literary history; in that sense they are as vital as ever. Yet allegory has also been kept alive because readers and critics apparently have too much at stake to let it fade completely away and because writers continue to find pro- ductive ways to incorporate allegorical elements into their fictions. We find ourselves tending to allegory—especially when it seems severely wounded— because allegory embodies something about the literary experience that we value highly.

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