According to the theoretical accounts which survive in the rhetorical handbooks of antiquity, allegory is extended metaphor, or an extended series of metaphors; and both allegory and metaphor are linguistic ‘tropes’: their purpose is essentially ornamental. The distance posited here between meaning on the one hand and the form of its expression on the other has come under decisive attack in the work of 20th century theorists, who have argued for the central role of metaphor in the construction of meaning. But how far in fact do the rhetorical handbooks represent the scope and subtlety of ancient thought on the matter? The papers presented here address this question from a variety of theoretical perspectives; they examine the origin and meaning of the term ‘metaphor’, set ancient against modern theories of language, and theory against practice. The inclusion of papers devoted to allegory in the writing and exegesis of antiquity provides, in the first place, another way of testing the adequacy of ancient rhetorical theory; but it also extends the debate into areas of the literary life of antiquity which have been unjustly sidelined or neglected.
Publication Type
- Book