As A. C. Hamilton observed, all
interpretations of The Faerie Queene
are “Procrustean: a matter of finding
several points common to the poem and
some other discourse, and then
aligning them, using whatever force is
needed to spin one’s own tale” (2001
edition, 17).
Jim Broaddus
--
Retired, Ind. State.Univ.
2487 KY 3245
Brodhead, KY 40409
jcn:
An allegory is an interpretation with
an agenda--its own (i.e., it is a
stringent or dubious construal or
re-construal of significance by means
of ideological retrofitting,
programatic misconstruction, and
ideational displacement):
Compare Heidegger:
Readers have taken constant offenseat
th eviolence of my interpretations.
Their allegations of violence can
indeed be supported by this [present]
text. Philosophicohistorical
research is always correctly subject
to this charge wherever itis directed
against atempts to set in motion a
thoughtful dialogue between thinkers.
In contrast to the
methods of historical philology,which
has its own agenda, a thoughtful
dialogue is bound by other laws--laws
which are more easily violated. (Kant
and the Problem of Metaphysics)
Compare Gordon Teskey:
The discharge of interiority
accomplished by torture bears more
than accidental resemblance to the
process of allegorical interpretation.
(Allegory and Violence)
Compare Pope, "A receipt to make an
Epic Poem":
For the Moral and ALLEGORY. These you
may extract out of the Fable
afterwards, at your leisure: Be sure
you _strain_ them sufficiently." (Peri
Bathos, chap. xv)
-- Jim N.
[log in to unmask]
James Nohrnberg
Dept. of English, Bryan Hall 219
Univ. of Virginia
P.O Box 400121
Charlottesville, VA 22904-4121
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