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2. Translating Tradition ince much of my study of Invisible Man relies not only on a complex understanding of Ralph Ellison's use of allusion but also on an understanding of allusion in general, it is necessary now to take an extended look at that literary device so heavily employed by Ellison's stylistic mentors, Eliot and Joyce. This is especially necessary because surprisingly little has been written about theory of allusion. 1 Ziva Ben-Porat sums up the situation remarkably well when she says, "The paucity of theoretical discussion of literary allusion stands in strikingly inverse proportion to the abundance of both actual allusion in literary works and the focus on particular allusions in many critical writings" ("The Poetics of Literary Allusion ," 106). This is particularly surprising in light of all the contemporary work relating linguistics to literature. 2 One could make the case that implicit in this work or derivable from it is the idea that all language is allusion, that "allusion" accurately describes the relationship between the "signifier" and the "signified." If we wish, however, to focus on practical literary criticism-wish to consider the world made up of many things, of which literature is a part, and language is a part, but neither the consuming whole-then it may be useful to make some finer distinctions. I want to limit this discussion, therefore, to literary allusions and examine descriptions of the process by which readers make meaning through attending to allusion. 3 For that reason it may be useful to look at this problem in intertextual relationships as it has been framed by some modern and contemporary critics. Reuben Brower's Alexander Pope-The Poetry ofAllusion is a good starting point. 4 For Brower, allusion is a way of embracing the past and blending it with the topical. Citing the Augustan sense of balance between the novel and the traditional, Brower lauds those poets who successfully achieve this blend. Dryden's poetry, he says, ttbrought the larger light of European literature and European past into verse of local public debate" (127). His mode is allusive in a wide variety of \\lays: in close imitation or parody of other writers, in less exact references to language, styles, and conventions of 28 Invisible Criticism other literatures-Classical, Biblical, and French-in drawing on the large materials of philosophy and theology, in playing of popular parallels between contemporary religious and political situations and those of ancient history, sacred and secular. Through this mode Dryden makes his "affirmation of Europe." (8) This paragraph gives us a concise survey of the forms ofallusion, and, more important here, suggests that an allusion is an act of affirmation, an appeal to recognized values in the face of transient experience. The contemporary writer affirms affiliation with the past, and the result is that "thanks to Dryden the tone of Augustan poetry is less parochial than it might have been: it is resonant with echoes of other literary worlds, of larger manners and events" (Alexander Pope, 11). The Continent-both a historical and a physical entity-with its larger manners and events, sheds its larger light on the "modern." The past, in this way, becomes the constant against which modern life can be measured and criticized: "Let us consider more particularly how this mode worked, how and why epic allusions offered Dryden a way of expressing important values. In ironic contexts, the more or less close imitations of epic introduced a standard of manners and actions by which the exploits of politicians and poetasters might be measured" (Alexander Pope, 10). Because criticism-social, literary, religious-grounded solely in contemporary standards lacks the heft of more universal authority, allusions not only identify a work with the "larger" past, but also measure the "smaller" present, and thereby eliminate some of the relativism involved in making judgments. Dryden's satire, therefore, measures life not only in the dim light of contemporary standards but in the larger light of tradition, and universality is allimportant because it makes the topical endure. Since writing a poem which refers to the larger past secures for it the indefinite future, the skillful use of allusion enlarges the immediate work; but in another way, it diminishes the immediate work. For the act of affirmation is also an act of subordination; implicit in the affirmation of the past is the sense that the past is a standard to which the present ought be adapted. When a work brings tradition into it, therefore, it also enters...

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