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Allegory and The Incredible Fable: The Italian View From Dante To Tasso

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Robert L. Montgomery Jr.
Robert L. Montgomery Jr.*
Affiliation:
University of Texas, Austin
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Extract

Our knowledge of medieval and Renaissance theory of allegory is largely governed by two traditions, the rhetorical definition inherited from Quintilian and the exegetical method of reading on two or more levels of meaning, a method traceable to Augustine and usually illustrated by Dante's letter to Can Grande Della Scala. The rhetorical view of allegory as inversio and extended metaphor is mostly useful for examining the figure on a narrow scale, normally as part of a larger context. It describes an element of style but not a fictional structure. The exegetical tradition, though widely employed as a technique of reading, was, if one is to judge by Renaissance critical theory, seldom discussed or fully analyzed after Petrarch. When it was, as in Harington's Apology prefaced to his translation of Orlando Furioso, the result could be confusing. Generally critics were equipped with the handy assumption that all literature was susceptible to the figurative readings habitually given to Scripture, and the method was convenient to the allegorical interpretation of myth.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 81 , Issue 1 , March 1966 , pp. 45 - 55
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1966

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References

1 Useful surveys, largely confined to English theory, are Joshua McClennen, “The Meaning and Function of Allegory in the English Renaissance,” Univ. of Michigan Contribs. in Modern Philol., No. 6 (April 1947), and Edward A. Bloom, “The Allegorical Principle,” ELE, xvi (1951), 163–190. The latter includes the rhetorical tradition in a broad account of theorizing about allegory. Bloom argues (p. 167) that the Renaissance considered the allegorical fiction a tool for moral didacticism and suggests that there was less interest in esthetics than in doctrine.

2 McClennen notes (pp. 8, 13–15) that Harington treats Ariosto's allegory as episodic rather than continuous through the entire work. This much is evident from Harington's notes to each canto. Yet in the Apology he argues that the work is wholly and continuously allegorical and that allegory is universal in literature. Moreover, his illustration of how myth may be read allegorically is unusually free-wheeling: he postulates at least five levels of meaning for the story of Perseus and the Gorgon.

Those Italians of the Renaissance who indicate an awareness of the exegetical tradition are more circumspect. Cristoforo Landino's Comento ... sopra la Comedia di Dante (Florence, 1481), p. 10v, simply follows Dante in listing the usual four levels. Bernardino Daniello, Della Poetica (Vinegia, 1536), pp. 28–29, remarks that Dante and Petrarch may be read on moral, philosophical, and theological levels. A somewhat looser classification appears in Girolamo Fracastoro's Naugerius sive de Poetica (1555), trans. Ruth Kelso, Univ. of Illinois Studies in Lang. and Lit., Vol. ix, No. 3 (Urbana, 1944), p. 70. Jacopo Mazzoni's classification in Della Difesa della Comedia di Dante, Part i (Cesena, 1688; 1st pub. 1587), pp. 813–814, organizes allegory into contemplative, moral, and civil types. These are not understood as levels of the same symbolic fiction. But Gabriele Zinano's Il Sogno, overo della Poesia (Reggio, 1590), p. 33, proposes moral, natural, and divine levels and interprets Ovid's fable of Apollo and Daphne in all three senses. Tasso mentions “the allegorical and other senses” in his Del Giudizio sovra la sua Gerusalemme da lui Medesimo Riformata (1595) in Le Prose Diverse di Torquato Tasso, ed. Cesare Guasti (Florence, 1875), i, 471 (cited hereafter as Prose Diverse). The nature of these references suggests that the topic of levels or types of allegory was taken for granted. A useful general review of the exegetical tradition of interpretation is Harry Caplan's “The Four Senses of Scriptural Interpretation and the Medieval Theory of Preaching,” Speculum, iv (July 1929), 282–290.

3 La Vita Nuova, xxv, trans. Mark Musa (New Brunswick, N.J., 1957). Unless otherwise noted, all translations are mine.

4 In La Vita Nuova Dante is not concerned specifically with allegory, which for him involves hidden meaning. But in his view both personification and allegory result from the invention of the false to convey the true. Furthermore, the allegorical fable may be verisimilar or not. See Il Convivio, Tractate ii, i, trans. W. W. Jackson (Oxford, 1909), pp. 73–74.

5 Boccaccio on Poetry, ed. and trans. C. G. Osgood (New York, 1956), p. 48. References to the Genealogy are to this edition.

6 Ibid., p. 63.

7 Ibid., pp. 48–49.

8 Ibid., p. 49. Augustine, one of Boccaccio's main authorities for the figurative reading of literature, says in On Christian Doctrine, ed. and trans. D. W. Robertson, Jr. (New York, 1958), p. 88, “whatever appears in the divine Word that does not literally pertain to virtuous behavior or to the truth of faith you must take to be figurative.”

9 Cf. Petrarch's argument that poetry and Scripture agree in using the impossible as a figurative vehicle, in a letter to his brother, Antologia Storica della Critica Letterarie Italiana, ed. Aldo Andreoli (Milan, 1926), i, 32.

10 Boccaccio on Poetry, p. 53.

11 Landino in his commentary on Dante reflects some of Boccaccio's attitudes, but his understanding of the function of allegory is limited to a terse acknowledgment of the four levels of meaning in The Divine Comedy (see above, n. 2), and in another work, although he accepts allegory as the principle which makes literary meaning clear, he also asserts that the false and monstrous are not poetic—Opera Horatii cum Commentario Christophori Landini (Florence, 1482), pp. clviv–clvii, clviiv. See Bernard Weinberg's History of Literary Criticism in the Italian Renaissance, 2 vols. (Chicago, 1961), i, 80–81. A generation later Daniello allows the poet nearly complete license to range away from factual and historical reality and assumes sweepingly that all fiction is allegory—Della Poetia (Vinegia, 1536), pp. 11, 19. He notes (p. 41) that the poet's art is distinctive in mixing the true with the false, but he does not subject the topic to analysis. His dominant concern is to promote the cause of poetry as rhetorically persuasive. Bernardino Tomitano, in his Ragionamenti della Lingua Toscana (Venice, 1545), manages a somewhat greater precision. In response to the standard charge that poets prevaricate and deceive and that therefore their works, which deal with the metamorphoses of men into animals and with the immortalities of the gods, are nothing but lies, he proposes two categories of lie, the fraudulent and the artful (p. 44). The latter, “if listened to superficially, as it were ... bears the odor of an erroneous story, but if it is viewed with clear eyes, it yields a sincere and simple truth” (p. 46).

12 See Weinberg, Chs. ix–xiii, for a detailed study of the rise of Aristotelian criticism. This work is indispensable in following the mainstream of Cinquecento literary theory. My debt to it, both general and particular, will be evident in the course of this article, and I cite it frequently as the most complete and authoritative reference available.

13 Poetics, 60a26, 61b9, trans. S. H. Butcher, Aristotle's Theory of Poetry and Fine Art, 4th ed. (New York, 1951).

14 P. 2. Cited by Weinberg, i, 6.

15 Weinberg, i, 397–398.

16 In Librum Aristoteles, pp. 309–310.

17 Weinberg, i, 392. See also i, 412–415, 504, 507, 547–548, 615, and 618–619, for discussions of audience opinion in the commentaries of Maggi, Castelvetro, Piccolomini, and Salviati.

18 Trans. Ruth Kelso, pp. 69–70.

19 Mazzoni is the most prominent advocate of this view; see below. Others are Antonio Maria de'Conti, Orationes, & Praefationes Omnes (Venice, 1582), p. 145v (cited by Weinberg, i, 268); Iacopo Grifoli, Oratio de Laudibus Poetarum Perusiae Habita in Orationes Variae Variis in Locis Habitae (Venice, 1572; 1st pub. 1557), p. 58; Lorenzo Parigiuolo, Questione della Poesia (Rome, 1586), p. 13 (cited by Weinberg, i, 621).

20 “Discorso contro l'Ariosto,” Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale MS. ix, 125 (Florence); pub. in Rendiconti della Reale Accademia dei Lincei, Classe di Science, Morali, Storiche e Filologiche, Serie Quinta, xxii (1913), 52. My references are to the published text, since the condition of the MS prevents accurate reading. Weinberg (ii, 947) dates the treatise 1575–76.

21 “Discorso contro l'Ariosto,” pp. 53, 56.

22 Biblioteca Riccardiana MS. 1539 (Florence), fols. 132–144. See Weinberg, i, 201–203, 580–581.

23 Fols. 134v–135. An extensive coverage of allegorical subjects in medieval and Renaissance art may be found in Vol. ii of Raimond Van Marie's Iconographie de l'art profane au moyen âge et à la Renaissance (The Hague, 1931–32).

24 Ragionamento ... sopra le Cose Pertinenti, alla Poetica (Florence, 1581), pp. 8–9, 12. The work was originally a series of lectures delivered in 1573; see Weinberg, ii, 1149.

25 In a set of notes for a lecture in defence of Dante, Biblioteca Medicea MS. Ashburnham 562 (Florence), p. 19; trans. Weinberg, ii, 887. For possible dating see Weinberg, ii, 884–885.

26 The quarrel is dealt with extensively by Weinberg, ii, 954–1073.

27 A different view from another of Tasso's champions is that of Camillo Pellegrino, Replica ... alla Risposta de gli Accademici della Crusca Fatta contra il Dialogo dell'Epica Poesia ... (Florence, 1585), pp. 149–150. Pellegrino justifies imperfections and improbabilities as necessary to the allegory, although he rather confusingly adds that the work is also verisimilar.

28 “Della Poetica ... La Deca Ammirabile,” Biblioteca Palatina MS. Pal. 408 (Parma), fol. 57; see Weinberg, ii, 774. I have used Weinberg as the source of references to the unpublished portions of Patrizi's work, which I have not seen.

29 Della Poetica ... La Deca Istoriale (Ferrara, 1586), pp. 83, 85–88.

30 Weinberg, ii, 772, 773.

31 Della Difesa della Commedia di Dante, Part i, p. 556. See Weinberg, i, 24–26, 324–328, and ii, 877–883, for a discussion of a number of points relevant to this paper. Weinberg's references to Part I of Mazzoni's work are to the 1587 edition which I have not seen. I refer to the 1688 edition, differently paginated.

32 Akin to Mazzoni's support of Dante is Orazio Capponi's “Risposta ... in Difesa della Comedia di Dante,” Biblioteca Communale MS. G.IX.54 (Siena), dated 1577. This was written in answer to Bulgarini's attack on Mazzoni's earlier defense of Dante. See Weinberg, ii, 856–858.

33 “Sopra l'Allegoria del Poeta nella Sua Favola,” Biblioteca Communale MS. D.VII.10 (Siena), fols. 62-62v, 64-64v. See Weinberg, i, 338–339, and ii, 687–688.

34 Difese ... in Risposta all'Apologia, e Palinodia di Monsig. Alessandro Cariero Padovano (Siena, 1588), p. 62.

35 A late critic, such as Gabriele Zinano in his Il Sogno overo della Poesia (Reggio, 1590), may still remain confident that allegory is consistent both with imitation and with the possible, qualifying the latter to include accidental impossibilities, “which are impossible in themselves, as Aeneas' journey into hell” (p. 12). As one might expect, the saving feature is allegory (pp. 13–14). Zinano admits that the ancients may have believed fables no longer credible to moderns whose poetry must use different materials, but the essential method—covert instruction in philosophy under the veil of the fable—remains the same (p. 32; see Weinberg, ii, 671–672).

36 Discorsi dell'Arte Poetica ed in Particolare sopra il Poema Eroico (Venice, 1587), repr. in Prose Diverse, ed. Guasti, i, 11. See also i, 13: “In its nature poetry is nothing other than imitation ... and imitation cannot be separated from verisimilitude.” According to Weinberg (i, 340), the treatise was begun in 1565.

37 Weinberg, i, 341.

38 Prose Diverse, ed. Guasti, i, 301.

39 Lombardelli, Discorso Intorno a i Contrasti, p. 37. Tasso, Risposta, p. 15.

40 Prose Diverse, ed. Guasti, i, 454. Emphasis mine.