ALL LEG GORY
Thursday, 13 March 2008 01:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
taimatsuI may be mildly sleep-deprived. I have acquired further supplies of chocolate/juice/pasta/cocktail sausages om yom yom.
I am working on an essay analysing George Hebert's poem The Pilgrimage. I'm looking at the image of the pilgrim/life's journey in this and other lyric poems dated 1340-1650.
I do know what an allegory is. The problem I'm having is the difference between an allegory like one of Jesus' parables (A woman loses a coin in a dark part of her house...) and an allegory like this poem or Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress. In the first one, the story itself is self-contained and may seem a bit pointless, until Jesus/whoever says 'Aha! The woman is like... and the coin is like... and...' and gives the key to the symbols. In Bunyan or here in Herbert at least half the symbol-keys are right out there in the open - "the Slough of Despond," "the rock of Pride," "Fancy's meadow." If they were saying 'Chappie goes on a trip, leaves city, climbs hills, gets held up in a pretty meadow, meets a man who gives bad advice, eventually reached beautiful city,' I'd get my head round this easily, but I'm confused as to whether it really counts if you put a whole lot of EVERYMAN! PRIDE! WORLDLY WISEMAN! ANGEL! in there.
Talk to me, Englishy people! (note I haven't actually read the Bunyan so don't refer too closely to it in explaining things!)
I am working on an essay analysing George Hebert's poem The Pilgrimage. I'm looking at the image of the pilgrim/life's journey in this and other lyric poems dated 1340-1650.
I do know what an allegory is. The problem I'm having is the difference between an allegory like one of Jesus' parables (A woman loses a coin in a dark part of her house...) and an allegory like this poem or Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress. In the first one, the story itself is self-contained and may seem a bit pointless, until Jesus/whoever says 'Aha! The woman is like... and the coin is like... and...' and gives the key to the symbols. In Bunyan or here in Herbert at least half the symbol-keys are right out there in the open - "the Slough of Despond," "the rock of Pride," "Fancy's meadow." If they were saying 'Chappie goes on a trip, leaves city, climbs hills, gets held up in a pretty meadow, meets a man who gives bad advice, eventually reached beautiful city,' I'd get my head round this easily, but I'm confused as to whether it really counts if you put a whole lot of EVERYMAN! PRIDE! WORLDLY WISEMAN! ANGEL! in there.
Talk to me, Englishy people! (note I haven't actually read the Bunyan so don't refer too closely to it in explaining things!)
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Date: Thursday, 13 March 2008 05:59 pm (UTC)I wonder if you took the post-it notes out, would you have a roman a clef? You would, I think, unless you made your signifying things, the things which stand for something else, so obvious that they are universally understood symbols. In which case it would probably just be boring. I don't know.