Structures of Appearing: Allegory and the Work of Literature

Online ISBN:
9780823242887
Print ISBN:
9780823242849
Publisher:
Fordham University Press
Book

Structures of Appearing: Allegory and the Work of Literature

Brenda Machosky

Associate Professor in Humanities and English

University of Hawai'i West O'ahu
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Published:
2 November 2012
Online ISBN:
9780823242887
Print ISBN:
9780823242849
Publisher:
Fordham University Press

Abstract

This book addresses the limitations of a metaphysical, aesthetic approach to literature, an approach that effectively excludes allegory. By using a phenomenological approach, the author proposes a new understanding of allegory that is not about finding meaning but about experiencing language. The author recasts the historical relationship between art and philosophy, critiques aesthetics as an ideology that has long subjugated art to philosophical criteria of judgment, and revitalizes allegory as a fundamental and powerful structure supporting all language. Rather than being a mere signifying device, allegory is the structure by which something appears that cannot otherwise appear. It supports the appearance of literary fictions and also philosophical ideas that are otherwise impossible to present or represent. The allegorical image is not a likeness to anything, not a subjective reflection but an absolute otherness that becomes accessible by virtue of the structure of its appearance. The book includes readings of Plato, Prudentius, Dante, Spenser, Hegel, Goethe, and finally, Kafka. Philosophical works are exposed as needing an allegorical structure. Literary texts demonstrate the way that allegory, as such, works rather than what the allegory might mean. The book concludes by proposing an alternative approach to reading and thinking about literary texts in an allegorical mode. The author develops a different mode of language, allegorical rather than philosophical, illogical rather than logical, with which to communicate about literature and art.

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