The World Without Allegory

“...truth hidden in beauteous fiction.” Dante, Convivio.

In the twentieth century, and I expect the twenty-first to be a continuance, allegory was generally derided. In a century of disillusionment, of deconstruction, straightforward speech was appreciated. That is one reason I despise politics, and the worminess of those who would escape justice by ambiguity, such as by redefining words, like “the”, “a”, or “is”. In politics all words are under suspicion of allegorical or double meaning. This desire for truthful words meant disdain for figurative speech. In allegory not only the speech but the concepts are figurative.

There was a time, prior to the twentieth century, when all arts – poetry, painting, sculpture, architecture, music – were concerned with beauty. The twentieth century gave that up, for the most part. Dante’s quote reflects the usefulness of allegory – to convey truth in beauty, a statement that was prevalent five centuries later as Keats echoed the statement. But the twentieth century has no use for beauty. Any artist who still expressed the old motto was not taken seriously. Avante-gardism and novelty were the important methods, and thus became the subject of art, or rather, the art became subject to them. Beauty had grown old, irrelevant, delusional.

She still has her servants, the lineage, perhaps, of Dante, Chaucer, and Keats. They may no longer have the role in society they once had – they are the old house staff of the old lady, still not convinced that such servitude is archaic, or that we should give her the finger and proclaim our freedom by smearing her picture with dung.

Mention of C.S. Lewis Discarded Image and Pilgrim's Regress

Quick review of The Discarded Image:

A very good introduction to medieval and Renaissance literature, constructing the Model of the Universe that was popularly held at that time. Lewis builds the Model by citing a substantial number of works that address cosmology, astronomy, medicine, rhetoric, etc. Subjects referred to by medieval authors are compiled, such as the characteristics of people described by the planet they were born under or the balance of their humours; the inhabitants of earth, aether, and the sky; daemons, angels and faeries; the separation of body and soul. A very good reference, and the beginning of a very long reading list, most of which may be found online.


Quick review of Pilgrim’s Regress:

A book that is as useful for understanding Lewis's personal experience as his autobiography, Surprised by Joy. He takes up some of the same themes, this time defining his desire for God as Romanticism, which he later calls Joy. The story is of the journey of the character John, as he searches for something to fulfill that desire for something he can't yet define. He meets a variety of characters who reflect philosophies that Lewis considered before becoming a Christian. For example, there are characters who represent Freudians, Epicureans, Classicists. Through the adventure John realizes that things such as sex, knowledge, aesthetic beauty, do not fulfill that desire.

The story is told as an allegory, modeled after John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, because, as Lewis writes in the Afterword: "But in fact all good allegory exists not to hide but reveal; to make the inner world more palpable by giving it an (imagined) concrete embodiment.... For when allegory is at its best, it approaches myth, which must be grasped with the imagination, not with the intellect." (208) Nonetheless, it is engages the intellect too.