Image and Meaning: Metaphoric Traditions in Renaissance Poetry

by Don Cameron Allen

When they were first issued, the essays that form the substance of this book constituted experiments in reading learned poems. The author has now added four new essays on Shakespeare, Milton, and Herrick which continue to develop the method - now proved by time - that was announced in the original volume. Professor Allen contends that no one can explain precisely how Renaissance poetry - or the poetry of any age beyond our own - was written or how it was read by contemporaries. Although approximations may be made, even the most learned, the most sensitive and perceptive of these will only partially recapture the meaning of the work in its cultural and emotional milieu. At best, modern man can read a poem only as a modern man. The reader who makes associations between literary themes and poetic figures, however, can most often achieve an understanding of the spirit of the poetry of the past. Professor Allen employs in these essays the technique of looking into each metaphor and tracing its meaning in the context of all Western literature, beginning with the earliest Greek poetry. According to the previous use of metaphors and themes by Greek, Latin, and medieval poets, as well as by Continental contemporaries, he explicates eleven well-known poems and one play of the English Renaissance. His analysis reveals rich variations in the use and meaning of theme and image and enables him to develop fresh interpretations of the poems.

Hardcover

First published April 1, 1968