ESC: English Studies in Canada

P E R S O N I F I C A T I O N A N D F A B L E I N G E O R G E H E R B E R T ’ S A L L E G O R I E S SAAD EL-GABALAWY University of Calgary I n his Latin poem, “In Angelos” (p. 415) ,JHerbert states that man lacks the mature intelligence of angels who enjoy the divine gift of intuitive and im­ mediate apprehension. Man must employ the senses to give him the forms of things: Intellectus adultus Angelorum Haud nostro similis, cui necesse, Vt dentur species, rogare sensum: This metaphysical conception underlies Herbert’s constant attempt in The Temple to incarnate his central insights in concrete forms that can be grasped by the mind and sustained imaginatively. Many modern critics have analysed in detail the poet’s visual configuration of abstract ideas in images and sym­ bols, but little has been done in the appraisal of his allegorical technique. This area still offers possibilities of research which might yield stimulating results. It is my intention in this study to explore Herbert’s creative use of personifica­ tion and fable as a means of illustration, persuasion and “delightful in­ struction.” Modem descriptions of Renaissance works often seem to proceed on the false assumption that allegoria, prosopopoeia and personification are almost identical. It might be useful at the outset to attempt some clarification of these terms in order to draw fine distinctions and indicate divergences. Through the literary figure, prosopopoeia, the writer tries, so to speak, to act out his meaning by attributing speeches and actions to animals, inanimate things or abstractions. This peculiarly vivid form of interplay between abstrac­ tions and concretions is recommended by rhetoricians for its power to “confirme and make [the] cause evident,” so that it “is very profytable in perswading , chyding, complayning, praysing and pittying.” 2The sensuous detail engendered by the use of this figure does not remain on the plane of sensuous description. This is due to the nature of its function, which makes images not essentially but only instrumentally sensuous, serving to illustrate ideas and give them the maximum immediacy and dramatic intensity. Herbert effectively E n g lish Studies in C anada, v , i , Spring 1979 uses prosopopoeia in “The Sacrifice,” where he obliterates the historic dis­ tance by putting words into the mouth of the Crucified. The oratio of Christ is thus abstracted from the world of historic events to be vividly re-enacted in the heart of the present. As for allegoria, which often tends to use sensuous figures of little com­ plexity, it does not use metaphor; it is by definition a continued metaphor: “In a Metaphore there is a translation of one word onely, in an Allegorie of many, and for that cause an allegorie is called a continued Metaphore.”3 With their emphasis on the “doubleness of levels” in allegory, most Renais­ sance critics describe the literal level as a veil hiding the truth, but assert that the veil must be thin enough for the reader to establish a legitimate relation­ ship between the two dimensions.4 Allegoria exhibits the normal relation of concretion to abstraction found in metaphor, in the shape of a series of par­ ticulars with further meanings. Each sensuous detail is by virtue of its initial base already a metaphor, forming part of a larger figure. The normal develop­ ment of the figure would be towards sensuously apprehensible details, leading the mind to universally comprehensible ideas. The purpose of allegoria is to give intellectual pleasure by a meaning half-concealed, which enhances moral and spiritual teaching through mental delight. Its function as the handmaiden of ethics becomes in Sidney’s Apologie for Poetrie a part of the larger justifi­ cation of poetry itself. “Personification of abstractions” is often regarded as the very root of alle­ gory, especially by C. S. Lewis who tends to associate them intimately, perhaps too intimately.5The popular tag “personification allegory” has been adopted pejoratively by some contemporary critics who follow such eminent writers as Coleridge, Blake, or Yeats in their depreciation of allegory as a kind of “me...