Description
Book SynopsisRevealing the immense richness of the allegorical tradition, this book demonstrates how allegory works in literature and art, as well as everyday speech, sales pitches, and religious and political appeals. It shows how allegor expresses fundamental emotional and cognitive drives, and relates it to a wide variety of aesthetic devices.
Trade Review"Allegory is a brilliantly original analytical description of the organization of symbolic fiction; it deals with the most interesting topics and asks the right questions; its examples are learned and fascinatingly offbeat... What Mr. Fletcher has achieved is nothing less than a redescription of literature with allegory at the centre."--Times Literary Supplement "[S]parkles with fascinating observations."--Modern Philology
Table of ContentsList of Illustrations ix A Personal Foreword, Harold Bloom xiii Acknowledgments xvii Introduction 1 1. The Daemonic Agent 24 2. The Cosmic Image 69 3. Symbolic Action: Progress and Battle 147 4. Allegorical Causation: Magic and Ritual Forms 181 5. Thematic Effects: Ambivalence, the Sublime, and the Picturesque 221 6. Psychoanalytic Analogues: Obsession and Compulsion 281 7. Value and Intention: The Limits of Allegory 306 Afterword 362 Afterword to the 2012 Edition 370 Illustrations 413 Bibliography 441 Index 463
