The Presence of Allegory: The Case of Philip Roth's American Pastoral

The concept of allegory poses some particularly perplexing problems for the literary critic, not the least of which is definitional. Is it a trope, a mode, or a genre? And/or is it hermeneutic in nature rather than compositional—a way of reading, in other words? Wrestling with such ontological issues has become a de facto prerequisite for any extended discussion of the term.¹ Once the critic has settled on a stipulative definition, the theorizing and application begin. This is a perfectly reasonable way to proceed, but the yield of such an approach is necessarily bounded by the definitional stipulations. In other words, the results never seem wholly satisfying, even if they are edifying. In this essay I propose a way of rereading allegory that can move us past some of the problems of definition that now seem to inhere in the term.

In order to do such a rereading, I will resist engaging in the definitional debates outlined above and instead focus on the structure of allegory, a structure that cuts across all of the various conceptions of the term. I will, in short, analyze allegory as narrative. The congruence of allegory and narrative is obvious in cases of narrative allegories—allegorical stories or narratives, in other words. Gay Clifford, for example, claims that literary allegory "is distinguished by its reliance on structured narrative" (14). Speaking to the now well-rehearsed distinction between allegory and symbol, Clifford goes on to argue that "It would be ridiculous to say that symbolism is impossible without narrative: of allegory it would be true" (14). Narrative is essential for allegory because allegory entails "some form of controlled or directed process" (15), and narrative is the vehicle through which such a process is both represented and structured. The idea of process clearly invokes concepts connected to narrative, concepts such as plot and temporal progression. It is not surprising, then, that Clifford understands allegory as a "kinetic" mode.

But I believe that the connection between allegory and narrative runs even deeper than the coincidental convergence that we see in narrative allegories. Indeed, even Paul de Man, a critic who looks at allegory more as a rhetorical trope than as a genre or a mode, finds that allegory rests on a structure that is inherently narrative. Subsequent to an interpretation of one of Wordsworth's "Lucy" poems, de Man argues that the structure of allegory manifests itself in this poem "in the tendency of the language toward narrative" (225). De Man's larger aim in "The Rhetoric of Temporality" is to contrast irony and allegory, and he does so through the issue of temporality. Irony is synchronic, allegory diachronic. Even in a lyric poem, what de Man identifies as allegory entails duration, and duration in the context of a literary work is frequently associated with narrative.

We might look in another direction as well to justify maintaining such a close connection between allegory and narrative. In The Political Unconscious, Fredric Jameson argues that, as readers of literature, we might have a natural tendency toward allegory. Jameson intends his opening chapter, "On Interpretation," as a defense of his Marxist-inspired allegorical approach to hermeneutics. More broadly, however, he lays the groundwork for a theory of interpretation that depends on a narrative-based conception of allegory. Building on the work of both Marxists and Myth Critics (especially Northrop Frye), Jameson argues that we are predisposed to see our world in terms of "master narratives." These master narratives then serve as the framework through which we make sense of or interpret the actual narratives that our culture produces. "The idea is," Jameson explains, "that if interpretation in terms of . . . allegorical master narratives remains a constant temptation, this is because such master narratives have inscribed themselves in the texts as well as in our thinking about them; such allegorical narrative signifieds are a persistent dimension of literary and cultural texts precisely because they reflect a fundamental dimension of our collective thinking and our collective fantasies about history and reality" (34).

Even a reader skeptical of Jameson's claim that a collective...