| y dissertation departs from the traditional view of allegory as an aesthetically inferior mode of literary representation. This Coleridgean model of allegory encouraged critics of American literature, such as Charles Feidelson and Richard Chase, either to ignore allegorical elements in fiction or to interpret them as signs of artistic failure. Instead of dismissing allegory on the basis of a formalist aesthetic, I employ Walter Benjamin's theory to argue for the cultural function of allegory in nineteenth and twentieth-century texts. Drawing in particular on his discussion of German Baroque Drama, I show how Benjamin's connection between allegory, melancholy, and the body illuminates the role of allegory in Melville, Twain, and Adams. Allegorical figures such as the carpenter in Moby-Dick, the Duplicate workers in The Mysterious Stranger... |
