The Redemption of Allegory Julia Fisher Washington, D.C. B.A., Yale University, 2013 M.A., University of Virginia, 2017 A Dissertation presented to the Graduate Faculty of the University of Virginia in Candidacy for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of English University of Virginia September 2019 ________________________ ________________________ ________________________ ________________________ ii Abstract Samuel Taylor Coleridge doomed allegory to the dustbin in the early 19th century—or at least he tried to. He alleged that allegory is uninteresting for its lack of richness or complexity. But across the pond, only a few decades later, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville wrote texts that, though they profess not to be, are undeniably allegorical, and far from simplistic, mechanical, definite, or easy. This dissertation argues that, despite the romantic taboo against allegory, allegory emerges as a potent way to test the limits of how figurative meaning is transmitted. I trace the story of how Shelley, Hawthorne, and Melville reveal allegory to be more complicated, more lasting than Coleridge imagined. I argue that Hawthorne and Melville do not simply attempt to move beyond allegory. Shelley’s figures offer a glimpse of how one might bypass Coleridge’s critique. But Hawthorne and Melville both write fiction that takes up the problem of allegory head-on, considering, often with allegory as a method as well as a subject, the nature, purpose, and efficacy of allegory. I read their fiction, which often has an epistemological bent, as not just failing to move beyond allegory but as actually being about allegory. Hawthorne sees allegory as an incarnation of the Unpardonable Sin, but he also sees that it is a sin the literary tradition dooms him to perpetuate. I argue that Hawthorne’s messier allegories grant his reader a new kind of freedom, and perhaps a small window of escape from the Unpardonable Sin of traditional allegory. Melville’s characters are vexed by just the kind of epistemological questions that allegory and allegoresis raise, and their inability to land on any solid answers means they can never stop teasing out whether allegory is an appropriate mode of thought. In Hawthorne and Melville’s hands, allegory takes on new forms. But these more difficult, more anxious allegories, suited to their new landscape, iii offer redemption for the whole mode of allegory. Allegory becomes far more interesting when, in these writers’ hands, it becomes a problem. iv Acknowledgments I want to thank my committee for their guidance through this strange project. Since before I even matriculated at U.Va., Mark Edmundson has been the rock of my grad school experience. He’s been a grounding voice of sanity, an excellent conversationalist on the all-important subjects of baseball and movies, and a sounding board for all my ideas, reasonable and unreasonable. He’s had faith in my work and my unconventional ambitions from the beginning, and this dissertation could not have taken shape without him. Jerry McGann delighted me with hours of conversation that showed me scholarship at its best. This dissertation grew out of a paper I wrote for his class, and out of the craving for knowledge he renewed in me. Emily Ogden has demanded precision and learning; she has shown me what this dissertation could be. Thanks to Jenny Geddes for signing on right at the end. Beyond my committee, Steve Cushman, Andy Kaufman, Michael Levenson, Andy Stauffer, and the Jewish Studies Fellowship enriched my intellectual and academic life at U.Va. This dissertation is the product of far more than three years in Charlottesville and two crazy summers. I am lucky to have had many great teachers over many years, and I want to offer particular thanks to the ones whose impacts have proved the most profound and lasting: Mahtab Mahmoodzadeh, Richard Avidon, Kevin Barr, John Burghardt, Nina Prytula, Katherine Dunbar, Bobby Asher, Andy Lipps, Hyeweon Lee, David Possen, David Kastan, David Bromwich, Harold Bloom, and especially Clay Roberson and Louise Brennan. Ten years ago, during my senior year of high school, Louise advised my first foray into Moby-Dick. She told me that I could not fit everything into my paper, but that I shouldn’t worry too much because some day I could put whatever else I wanted to say about the book in a dissertation. I hope to measure up to those teachers for my students. So many of this dissertation’s roots are in conversations with students—at Georgetown Day School, U.Va., and the Great Books Summer Program. Thanks to all of them—for reminding me every day that the study of English matters; for their curiosity, intelligence, enthusiasm, and kindness; for their questions; for their answers. Miranda Beltzer, Ankita Chakrabarti, Julianne McCobin, Sarah Redmond, Annie Thompson, and Madeline Zehnder offered feedback on parts of the dissertation along the way. Lily Meyer came to a talk. Linda Kinstler and Alice Robb joined me on two summer writing trips. Thanks to them for their companionship and cooking. Jody Goodman, Marc Fisher, and Aaron Fisher think these pages are over their heads. But they have Melville’s omnivorous curiosity, Hawthorne’s commitment to love, Shelley’s distrust of packaged thought and his cutting intelligence, and a linguistic delight all their own. Their minds, jokes, and love suffuse my thoughts. Charlottesville is not a hospitable place to navigate alone; luckily, I didn’t have to. For dinners, drinks, squash, movies, moratoriums, gossip, Shen Joe marathons, seminar games, trivia teams, road trips, late-night mountain-top dance parties—for their friendship: Evan Cheney, Neal Curtis, Adam Friedgen, Andy Nagle, Emily Ostertag, Jeremy Sorgen, Rory Sullivan, Annie Thompson, and Madeline Zehnder. And thanks especially to Julianne McCobin and Miranda Beltzer—I could not have imagined two better friends to come out of these years. To my amazement, because of them, Charlottesville became home. v Contents Introduction: The Problem of Allegory …………………………………………………. 1 What is allegory? ……………………………………………………………....... 7 The badness of allegory ………………………………………………………... 13 A definition? …………………………………………………………………….17 The way forward ……………………………………………………………...... 21 Chapter One: Shelley’s Figuration of Love ………………………………………….… 25 Coleridge and Shelley: love and allegory ……………………………………… 27 Shelley and allegory ……………………………………………………………. 35 Shelley’s figures: mutability …………………………………………………… 40 Figures of withdrawal ………………………………………………………….. 47 Vacancy ………………………………………………………………………… 52 Mutability and love …………………………………………………………….. 54 To America ……………………………………………………………………... 57 Chapter Two: Hawthorne and the Sin of Allegory …………………………………….. 65 Allegorical possibilities in “Rappaccini’s Daughter” ………………………….. 74 “Rappaccini’s Daughter” and allegoresis ……………………………………… 79 Hardened metaphors ……………………………………………………………. 83 The veil of bad allegory: “The Minister’s Black Veil” ………………………… 85 Human warmth …………………………………………………………………. 93 Inactive allegorical symbols: “The Celestial Railroad” ………………………... 96 The sin of allegory …………………………………………………………….. 104 Chapter Three: The Overreaching Allegory of Moby-Dick …………………….…...… 111 Ahab and Ishmael’s opposing stances on allegory ……………………………. 117 Imageless allegory: “Some” as epistemology …………………………………. 125 Ahab’s assertion of allegorical meaning ………………………………………. 130 Allegory’s overreach …………………………………………………………... 137 Ahab …………………………………………………………………………… 141 Ishmael ………………………………………………………………………… 146 In some dim, random way ……………………………………………………... 152 Conclusion: Allegory as Problem, Once More ………………………………………... 161 Works Cited ………………………………………………………………………….... 170 1 Introduction: The Problem of Allegory Billy Collins wrote an obituary for allegory in 1991. In “The Death of Allegory,” Collins imagines allegorical figures fled from ordinary life, retired in Florida (11), while the rest of the world has moved into a modernity free of personified abstractions: 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. (17-26) The capitalized allegorical figures Collins describes—“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”—are obsolete now, the poem claims (1-4). Collins is by no means alone in proclaiming the death of allegory.1 If 1 For other similar proclamations, see, for example, Edwin Honig, Theresa Kelley, and Gary Johnson. 2 allegory is dead, let’s name its murderer: Samuel Taylor Coleridge deserves the bulk of the credit. Allegory is boring. That was more or less the dominant charge in the 19th century, following from Coleridge: Allegory works mechanically, substituting figures for ideas, transmitting simple, straightforward understanding of dogmatic ideas. Coleridge, whom I will discuss at much more length later, alleged that allegory deals in “fixities and definites” and is uninteresting for its lack of richness or complexity (Biographia Literaria 305). But across the pond, only a few decades later, Nathaniel Hawthorne