The Structure of Allegorical Desire

Author(s): Joel Fineman

Source: October, Vol. 12 (Spring, 1980), pp. 46-66
Published by: The MIT Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/778574 .
Accessed: 11/05/2014 16:23
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of
content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms
of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

The MIT Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to October.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 128.205.114.91 on Sun, 11 May 2014 16:23:28 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

The StructureofAllegoricalDesire

JOEL FINEMAN
ea,
M vt aeutoe, Hi?17i&Sew'AxtXios
My titleshould be read backwardsand forwards,itsoftakenas objectiveand
subjectivegenitive. On the one hand, I am concernedwith the ways allegories
begin and with the ends towardswhich theytend.In general,thisis theproblem
of allegorical narrative,primarilya temporalissue regardingthe way allegories
linearlyunfold,but also, as has oftenbeen pointedout, a symbolicprogressthat
lends itselfto spatial projection,as when theTemple translatesthe Labyrinthor
the music of the spheressounds the orderof thestars.On the otherhand, I am
concerned with a specificallyallegorical desire, a desire for allegory, that is
implicit in the idea of structureitself,and explicit in criticismthatdirectsitself
towardsthe structurality
of literature.This is not only to say that the notion of
structure,
especiallyof literarystructure,
presupposesthesame systemofmultiply
articulatedlevels as does that of allegory, but also that the possibilityof such
coherentlypolysemicsignificanceoriginatesout of thesame intention,what I call
desire,as does allegorical narrative.
I speak of desirein deferenceto the thematicsof allegoryand to describethe
self-propelling,
digressiveimpulse of allegorical movement,forexample, theway
themeanderingCanterburyTales begins by settingthescene and establishingthe
atmospherein which folkproperly"longen" to go on pilgrimages,thatlonging
being motivationforeach pilgrim'sjourney to Canterbury,but also the way the
tales themselvesset offtowardsthe equally sacredcenterof theirown allegorical
space. I therefore
psychoanalyticallyassume thatthe movementof allegory,like
the dreamwork,enacts a wish thatdeterminesitsprogress-and thedream-vision
is, of course, a characteristicframingand opening device of allegory,a way of
situating allegory in the mise en abyme opened up by the varietyof cognate
accusatives that dream a dream,or see a sight,or tell a tale. On the otherhand,
with thisreferenceto psychoanalysisI mean also to suggestthatanalysisitself,the
criticalresponseto allegory,rehearsesthesame wish and therefore
embarksupon
the same pilgrimage,so thatpsychoanalysis,especiallystructuralpsychoanalysis,
by which todaywe are obliged to mean Lacan, is not simplytheanalysis,but the
extension and conclusion of the classic allegorical tradition from which it
derives-which is why psychoanalysisso readilyassimilatesthe greatarchetypes
of allegorical imageryinto its discourse:thelabyrinths,thedepths,thenavels,the
psychomachianhydraulics.

This content downloaded from 128.205.114.91 on Sun, 11 May 2014 16:23:28 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

RIPA.
DICESARKE
................
.
.....
..........
...

kaEI

0AGN.

..'~iiii~~iiii~~i~ii~~iiiii~iii!!i~~iiii
,,,,,i,i

,.E GE

11
i i!
OOOFi
' '

i ~*WAO,

This content downloaded from 128.205.114.91 on Sun, 11 May 2014 16:23:28 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

........

48

OCTOBER

I want to argue that thereis forliterarycriticisma historicalimportancein

on thehermeneuticcircletraced
thefactthatpsychoanalysisfoundsitsscientificity
in
its
own
as
the
that
desire
to
dream
know,
by
begins psychoanalysis,Freud's
dreamof Irma's injection,whose wish is thatits own interpretation
be correct.'If
psychoanalysisis theprevailingparadigm forcriticalinquirytoday,it is precisely
because The Interpretationof Dreams in thiswaydevelops itselfas thedream,and
thereforethe desire,of interpretationitself.But in thus basing itselfon its own
criticalreflection,
desirebecomes in psychoanalysis,as in allegory,both a theme
and a structuringprinciple, and its psychology,its theoryof the human, thus
becomes,in the wordsof anotherand famouslyambiguous genitive,theallegory
of love, while its metapsychology,its theoryof itself,becomes the allegory of
allegory. I am concerned with the logic, presumably the psycho-logicetymologically,the logos of thesoul-that in our literarytraditionlinksallegory,
and desireeach to each, and with what happens to interpretation
interpretation,
when its desire is no longer controllableby a figure.
That thereshould be formalreciprocitybetweenallegoryand its criticismis
not surprising.Theoretical discussions of allegoryregularlybegin by lamenting
the breadthof the termand relatingits compass to thehabit of mind that,as it is
irritatedlyput, sees allegory everywhere.Thus generalized, allegory rapidly
acquires the status of trope of tropes, representativeof the figuralityof all
language, the distance between signifierand signified,and, correlatively,the
of criticalactivityper se. As Northrop
responseto allegorybecomesrepresentative
"It
is
realized
not
often
that
all
Fryesays,
commentaryis allegorical interpretation,
an attaching of ideas to the structureof poetic imagery,"2as indeed Frye's
commentdemonstrates,in its presumptionof global, archetypalstructure,
which
is already allegoricization whateverpurely literaryclaims he may make forit.
Often,allegorywill internalizethis criticalmood that it evokes,and thisis what
didactic and sententioustone. This tendencyon the
gives it its characteristically
part of allegory to read itself,forits themeto dominate its narrative,or, as Frye
says, to prescribethe directionof its commentary,suggests the formalor pheof the genre with criticism.
nomenological affinities
More historically,we can note that allegory seems regularlyto surfacein
critical or polemical atmospheres,when for political or metaphysicalreasons
thereis somethingthatcannot be said. Plutarchis generallyinstancedas thefirst
to substitute&dXXqyopta
forthe more usual imdvouta
and he does so in thedouble
contextof defendingpoetryand demythologizingthegods.3In thishe picksup the
1.
Sigmund Freud, The Interpretationof Dreams, The Standard Edition of the Complete
citedas S.E.), ed. JamesStrachey,London, Hogarth
Psychological WorksofSigmund Freud (hereafter
Press, 1959,4, pp. 105-121.
2.
NorthropFrye,Anatomyof Criticism:Four Essays,Princeton,PrincetonUniversityPress,1971,
p. 89.
3.
See Jean Pepin, Mythe et Allbgorie: Les origines Grecques et les contestationsJudboChrbtiennes,Paris, Aubier, 1958,pp. 87-88.

This content downloaded from 128.205.114.91 on Sun, 11 May 2014 16:23:28 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

The Structureof Allegorical Desire

49

protoallegoricaltraditionof euhemerismthatgoes back to thethirdcenturyB.C.,

or to Plato, or beyondthatto the Pythagoreans,and whose importanceforliterary
theoryis not so much its dismantling of the pagan pantheon as, rather,the
defensivelyrecuperativeintentionit displays towardsauthoritativetextswhose
literalismhas failed. The dignityof Apollo is deflatedbut theprestigeof Homer
as philopreservedwhen the licentious intriguesof the gods are reinterpreted
sophic, naturalistic,or scientificparables.
This deploymentof allegoryin theserviceof establishedliterarytradition,a
way of revivingprior literaryauthoritiesby making them new throughcritical
revision-e.g., Ovid moralishe-forms the basis of Edwin Honig's theoryof
revivedand redeveloped
allegorical conception,4which has itselfbeen forcefully
in Harold Bloom's morepsychoanalytical(allegorical?)AnxietyofInfluence.It is
as though allegorywerepreciselythat mode which makes up forthedistance,or
heals the gap, between the present and a disappearing past which, without
would be otherwiseirretrievableand foreclosed,as, forexample,
interpretation,
the pseudohieroglyphologyof Horapollo, whose magic, hermeticgraphesiswas
developed just at thatmomentwhen the legibilityof hieroglyphswas lost.5
With the Patristicstheseallegoricizingperspectivesand purposes turninto
the dogma that lies at the base of all medieval and Renaissance critical theory.
Again allegoryis directedto criticaland polemical ends,and again themotivefor
allegoryemergesout of recuperativeoriginology.The Old Testamentis revived
when interpretedas typologicallypredictiveof the New, and the Gospels themselves receive the benefitof spiritualizing exegesis when the apocalypse they
prophesy is indefinitelydeferred.This is the major strain of allegoricizing
sensibilityin our tradition:the second- and third-century
legacy on which the
four-or three-foldmedieval schemes will depend. Allegorybecomes, forliteratureas fortheology,a vivifyingarchaeologyof occultedoriginsand a promissory
eschatologyof postponed ends-all this in the serviceof an essentiallypietistic
cosmology devoted to the corroborationof divinely ordered space and time,
preciselythe two matricesagainst which,as ErichAuerbachshowed,theconnotativenuances of figure,formaland chronic,develop.6
That allegory should organize itself with referenceto these spatial and
temporalaxes, that,as it were,it should embodyfigura,followsdirectlyfromthe
linguistic structureattributedto the figureby classic rhetorical theory.The
standardformulation,of course, is Quintilian's, which characterizesallegoryas
what happens when a single metaphoris introducedin continuous series. For
graveQuintilian thisis moreoftenthan not a defect,an excessofmetaphorlikely
4.
Edwin Honig, Dark Conceit: The Making of Allegory,Evanston, NorthwesternUniversity
Press, 1959.
5.
Sir Alan Gardiner,Egyptian Grammar;being an introductionto thestudyof hieroglyphs,3rd
ed., London, Oxford UniversityPress, 1957,pp. 10-11.
6.
Erich Auerbach, "Figura," Scenes from the Drama of European Literature,trans. Ralph
Manheim, Meridian, 1959,pp. 11-76.

This content downloaded from 128.205.114.91 on Sun, 11 May 2014 16:23:28 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

50

OCTOBER

to lead to enigma. But whetheravoided as a vice ofstyleor assiduously "invented"

for the sake of decorous amplification,allegory will be definedup throughthe
Renaissance as thetemporalextensionof trope.As such, theprocedureofallegory,
and the relations that obtain between its spatial and temporalprojections,are
circumscribed.Metaphoris theinitialequivocating insightinto thesystem
strictly
of doubly articulatedcorrespondencesand proportionsupon which depends the
analogizing logic of any tropingproposition.As theshepherdto his flock,so the
pilot to his boat, theking to his realm,thepriestto his congregation,thehusband
to his wife,the stomach to the body-metaphor will selectfromsuch a systemof
hierarchicallyarranged ratios (logoi) the particularsimilaritythat,as Aristotle
puts it, it chooses to see in differences.
Developed at length,in narrativesuccession, the continued metaphorwill maintain the rigorof the original conceit by
appealing to the over-allstructurethatgovernseach termin the series,with the
resultthatnarrativelogic directsitselftowardsintroducingthe fox, the tempest,
thecuckold,or thecankeras specificallystructuralpredetermined
consequencesof
thefirstmetaphorization.
Thus thereare allegories thatare primarilyperpendicular,concernedmore
with structurethan with temporal extenson,as, say, illustrationsof Fortune's
wheel,or Fludd's famousdiagramof the greatchain of being. On theotherhand,
thereis allegorythatis primarilyhorizontal,such as picaresque or quest narrative
wherefigurative
structureis onlycasually and allusivelyappended to thecircuitof
adventuresthroughtime. Finally, of course, thereare allegories thatblend both
axes togetherin relativelyequal proportions,as in The CanterburyTales, where
each figurativetale advances thestoryof thepilgrimageas a whole. Whateverthe
prevailingorientationofany particularallegory,however-up and down through
thedeclensionsof structure,
or laterallydevelopedthroughnarrativetime-it will
be successfulas allegoryonly to theextentthatitcan suggesttheauthenticity
with
which the two coordinatingpoles bespeak each other,with structureplausibly
unfolded in time, and narrativepersuasivelyupholding the distinctionsand
equivalences described by structure.In Roman Jakobson's linguistic formula,
which here simply picks up classic rhetoricaltheory(along with the awkward
of thedefinitionof metaphoritself),allegorywould be thepoetical
metaphoricity
projection of the metaphoric axis onto the metonymic,where metaphor is
understoodas the synchronicsystemof differences
thatconstitutesthe orderof
language (langue), and metonymythe diachronicprinciple of combinationand
connectionby means of which structureis actualized in timein speech (parole).7
(Taleus: "Continued metonymiais also allegory").8 And while Jakobsongoes on
to associate metaphor with verse and romanticism,as opposed to metonymy,
Roman Jakobson, "Linguistics and Poetics," The Structuralists:From Marx to Lkvi-Strauss,
7.
eds. R. and F. DeGeorge, New York, Anchor,1972,p. 95.
8.
Taleus, Rhetorica(1548),cited in Lee A. Sonnino, A Handbook to SixteenthCenturyRhetoric,
New York, Barnesand Noble, 1968,p. 121.

This content downloaded from 128.205.114.91 on Sun, 11 May 2014 16:23:28 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

The Structureof Allegorical Desire

51

which he identifies
withrealismand prose,allegorywould cut acrossand subtend
all such stylisticcategorizations,being equally possible in eitherverseor prose,
and quite capable of transforming
the most objective naturalisminto the most
subjectiveexpressionism,or themostdeterminedrealisminto themostsurrealistically ornamentalbaroque.
Thus defined,allegory fully deserves the generalization that rendersit
of language employedforliteraryends,and at thesame timewe can
representative
see why forcontemporarystructuralism
allegorywould be thefigureofspeechpar
excellence. No otherfigureso readilylays itselfout on thegridconstructedout of
the hypothesizedintersectionof paradigmatic synchronyand syntagmaticdiachrony,which is to say thatno otherfigureso immediatelyinstancesthedefinition
of linguistic structurethat was developed by Jakobson out of Saussure and the
Russian formalists,
and thathas since been applied to all the so-called sciencesof
man, fromanthropology(Levi-Strauss) to semiotics (Barthes)to psychoanalysis
(Lacan).
Several paradoxes, however,or apparent paradoxes, follow fromthiscuriously pure structurality
possessed byallegory,thoughtakensinglynone is at odds
with our basic literaryintuitions.On the one hand, as does structuralismitself,
allegorybegins with structure,thinksitselfthroughit, regardlessof whetherits
literaryrealizations orient themselvesperpendicularlyor horizontally,i.e., as
primarilymetaphoric or primarilymetonymic.At each point of its progress,
allegorywill selectits signifyingelementsfromthesystemof binaryoppositions
that are provided by what Jakobson would call the metaphoriccode, i.e., the
and as a resultallegorywill inevitablyreenforcethestructurality
of that
structure,
of
how
it
the
elements
themselves.
For
structure,
regardless
manipulates
Jakobson
and forallegory,"The poetic functionprojectstheprincipleof equivalence from
the axis of selection into the axis of combination,"' and so it is always the
structureof metaphor that is projectedonto the sequence of metonymy,not the
other way around, which is why allegory is always a hierarchicizingmode,
indicativeof timelessorder,howeversubversivelyintendedits contentsmightbe.
This is whyallegoryis "thecourtlyfigure,"as Puttenhamcalled it,1oan inherently
but because
political and therefore
religious trope,not because it flatters
tactfully,
in deferringto structureit insinuates the power of structure,giving offwhat we
can call the structuraleffect.So too, this is what leads a theoreticianlike Angus
Fletcherto analogize therhythmof allegoryto thatof obsessional neurosis:it is a
formal rather than a thematicaspect of the figure,derivingdirectlyfromthe
structurethatin-formsits movement."
On the other hand, if allegorical themesare in a sense emptied of their
9.
Jakobson,p. 95.
10. George Puttenham, The Arte of English Poesie (1589), facsimile edition, Kent, Kent State
UniversityPress,1970,p. 196.
11.
Angus Fletcher,Allegory:The Theory of a SymbolicMode, Ithaca, Cornell UniversityPress,
1964,pp. 279-303.

This content downloaded from 128.205.114.91 on Sun, 11 May 2014 16:23:28 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

52

OCTOBER

contentby the structurethatgovernsthem,if the particularsignifiers

of allegory
become vehicles of a largerstructuralstorywhich theycarrybut in which they
play no part, theyare at the same time ostentatiouslyforegroundedby thevery
thatbecomesimmanentin them.There is no clearerexample of this
structurality
than that of rhyme,which is preciselythe poetic featurewith which Jakobson
illustratedhis definitionof the poetical as the superimpositionof structural
similarityon syntagmaticcontinuity.With rhymewe do indeed have "equivalence in sound, projected into the sequence," 12 such that the principle of
equivalent selectiondoes indeed governsyntax;and theresultingliteraryeffectis
exactly that we hear the sound of the sound rather than the meaning of the
meaning. The same holds for the other metricaland intonational means of
markingpoetic periods as isochronic,all of which render"the timeof thespeech
flowexperienced."13Thus, ifbeforewe saw signifiers
lose theircontentwhen they
were subsumed in a metaphoricstructureto which theyonly obliquely referred,
we here see them lose that contentonce again when theystagilyembody that
structurein sequential movement.We hear the sounds but not thesensewhen the
signifiers,
gradedas similaritysuperinducedon continuity,point to themselvesas
signifersratherthan to what theysignify:poetic sense is exchanged forpoetic
sensuousness when the palpability and textureof the signans takes precedence
over and even, as in doggerel,occludes the signatumaltogether.Allegorywould
thus be exemplaryof Jakobson's purely poetic function,namely, thatmessage
which,chargedwithreflexive
poeticality,stressesitselfas merelymessage.But this
leaves us with theparadox thatallegory,which we normallythinkof as the most
didactic and abstractlymoral-mongeringof poetic figures,is at thesame timethe
most emptyand concrete:on the one hand, a structureof differential
oppositions
abstractedfromits constituentunits,on theother,a clamorofsignifiers
signifying
nothing but themselves.Rememberingthe sententiousnessof allegory,we are
entitledto ask whetherwith such a structuralist
descriptionthe thematichas not
been "structured"out of court.
The paradox is, ofcourse,onlyan apparentone, but I draw it out in thisway
so as to point to a real difficulty
in structuralist
poetics: namely,thatin orderto
maintainany thematicmeaning at all, structuralism,
like allegory,mustassume a
meaningfulconnectionbetweenmetaphoricand metonymicpoles. That meaning
is eitherwhat permitsthe two to join or theconsequence of theirjuncture.What
this means in practiceis that Jakobson will pick up the traditionof Pope and
Hopkins, or, for that matter,Wimsatt,and argue that sound is echo to sense.
Jakobson does not, of course, intend the naive claim that thereare different
phonemes for differentqualities-the notorious murmuring of innumerable
bees-though he does accept studieswhichsupportMallarm9'sdiscriminationsof
12.
13.

Jakobson,p. 109.
Ibid., p. 95.

This content downloaded from 128.205.114.91 on Sun, 11 May 2014 16:23:28 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

The Structureof Allegorical Desire

53

dark and light vowels. Rather,Jakobsonwants to say thatthestructureof poetic

sounds functionsin relation to the structureof its poetic signifiedsas a kind of
Peirceanindex,a littlelike thatto which it points,or, in negativelycontrapuntal
fashion, conspicuously, but equally indicatively,unlike. In pointing to themas in rhyme,the sounds thus also point beyondthemselvesto the
selves,therefore,
structureof theirsignifieds.The same goes forthesignifiedsthemselves,which at a
semantic and thematiclevel are again a structureof signifierspointing both to
themselvesand to a structureof signifiersbeyond themselves,all of them,alone
or together,eventuallypointing to the structureof language itself.This is the
essentiallyHegelian assumption that lies behind Jakobson's claim that "The
historyof a systemis in turnalso a system,"14 i.e., thathistoricaldiachrony,the
evolutionof a language, reactsstructurallyupon the synchroniclinguisticcode.
Once thesignifier'srelationto thesignified,i.e., thesign as a whole, is in thisway
understoodto be relativelymotivated,ratherthan utterlyarbitraryas in Saussure,
it is possible to make the sign itselfinto an index pointing to the structureit
embodiesand supports.Thus all thelevels of allegory,up throughand including
the thematic,will displaythemselvesand each otherwithresoundinglypoeticand
emphaticallystructuraleffect."5
But thisharmonious,now Leibnitzianstructure,
dependingas it does on an
utteridealization of the structureof the sign, occurs at a significantcost. "The
supremacyof poetic functionover referentialfunctiondoes not obliteratethe
referencebut makes it ambiguous."16 What this typicallyunbending aphorism
means is that in a structuralistpoem every signifierwill be simultaneously
metaphorand metonymy.
Jakobson'sexample is the girl in the Russian folktale
who comes to be symbolizedby the willow under which she walks. Ever afterin
the poem, girl and tree are metaphors each of the other by virtue of their
metonymicintersection,just as the sequential movementof the poem is conditioned by theirmetaphoricequivalence. In classical rhetoricwe would call thisa
synecdoche:thegirl is representedby the treeor it by she in thatone possessesthe
other. But in Jakobson's termswhat we have is a metaphoricmetonymyand a
metonymicmetaphor,and the result,not surprisingly,is allegory:
Similarity superimposed on contiguity imparts to poetry its thoroughgoing symbolic,multiplex,polysemanticessence which is beau14.
JuriiTynianov and Roman Jakobson,"Problems in the Studyof Language and Literature,"
The Structuralists,
p. 82.
15.
Similarly, because messages about the code are selected from the code, Lacan denies the
possibilityof a radical concept of metalanguage: "There is therelationhere of the systemto its own
constitutionas a signifier,which would seem to be relevantto the question of metalanguage and
which, in my opinion, will demonstratethe improprietyof that notion if it is intendedto define
differentiated
elementsin language." (Jacques Lacan, "On a Question Preliminaryto any Possible
Treatmentof Psychosis,"Ecrits,trans.Alan Sheridan, New York, Norton,1977,p. 185).
16.
Jakobson,p. 112.

This content downloaded from 128.205.114.91 on Sun, 11 May 2014 16:23:28 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

54

OCTOBER

tifullysuggestedby Goethe's "Alles Vergainglicheist nur ein Gleichnis" (Anythingtransientis but a likeness). Said more technically,
anythingsequentis a simile.In poetrywheresimilarityis superinduced
upon contiguity,any metonymyis slightly metaphorical and any
metaphorhas a metonymictint.17
Undoubtedly,poems, and allegoriesin particular,workthisway; thequestion is,
how can structuralismwork this way? What does it mean fora metonymyto be
slightlymetaphorical,and what is this "tint" that makes a metaphor a little
metonymic?If structuralismis the diacritical science because it begins with the
differencearound which binary oppositions assemble, what happens to its
scientificstatuswhen its own mostfundamentalopposites,metaphorand metonymy, are from the very beginning already implicated one in the other, the
differencebetween them collapsed for the sake of hierarchicized,structured,
"symbolic,multiplex," allegorical meaning. If these seem merelyabstractand
theoreticalissues,we can reformulatethemagain in termsof our original literary
problem: how does time get into structureand structureinto time; how does
allegorybegin, and why does it continue?
For reasons that will become clearerlater,I want to illustratethe problem
with the opening of The CanterburyTales, which is an instanceof the poetical
whose structurality
has neverbeen questioned,and wheretheallegorical relationof
and
time
is a straightforwardly
thematicas well as a formalissue.
ship
space
This is the case in severalways,but forour purposes most importantlyso with
regard to the opening months and seasons description,which is the stylized
conventionby means of which thePrologue places itselfsquarelyin a traditionof
allegorical beginning.This monthsand seasons descriptionis a long-established
conventionimmediatelyevocativeof and convenientto cosmological and metaphysical invention, a way of alluding through allegorical structureto the
mysteriousorderof thecosmos and theposition ofGod as unmovedmoverwithin
it. Here the Prologue can relyon a traditionthatgoes back to Lucretiusand to
Ovid and to Vergilianeclogue, and thatis thoroughlyalive and popular throughout the middle ages, whetherin manuscriptdecoration,cathedralornament,or
various scientifically
and philosophically inclined compendia. The details and
historyof this conventionneed not concernus now, save to the extentthatthey
allow us to referwith somecertaintyto theexplicitlyallegorical intentionsof The
CanterburyTales and toremarkthathere,as withany deploymentof a convention
withina literarytradition,we have preciselythejoining of paradigmand syntagm
by means of which a literarytextwill position itselfwithin the structurality
of
literatureas a whole (with the textpresentingitselfas eitherlike or unlike others
in the conventional paradigm-for Jakobson this would be the
literarycode, a
structureof genericoppositions-at thesame timeas it actualizestheparadigmin
17.

Ibid, p. 111.

This content downloaded from 128.205.114.91 on Sun, 11 May 2014 16:23:28 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

The Structureof Allegorical Desire

55

the temporalityof literaryhistory,though whether Chaucer's parole is here

intendedironicallyremainsan open question).
It is with referenceto the complex traditionof allegorical literatureand to
thepoem's burdenofcosmological, theological,and scientific
speculation,thatwe
enterthework.And it is withinthiscontextthatwe discoverin thePrologue's first
two lines, with thepiercingof March byApril,themetaphoricmetonymythatfor
Jakobson constitutesthe specificallypoetic effect.That is, when April with its
sweetshowerspierces thedroughtof March, we have the code of the months,or
more precisely the systemof oppositions that makes up the code, translated
directlyinto consecutivesequence, such that the binaryoppositions betweenthe
months,rainyApril versusdryMarch-but, of course,withinthe traditionthere
are other oppositions at stake besides the merelymeteorological-are projected
onto thecontinuous progressof themonthsthroughtheyear:after
systematically
then
March,
April, in a progressionthat completesand corroboratesitselfonly
when the entiretyof the monthlyparadigm unfolds itselfthroughthe temporal
totality,or what we should here properly call the syntagm,of the year.
Inevitably-and fortheauthorofa treatiseon theastrolabe,tautologically-this is
which tell
picked up by thesurroundingor encapsulatingastrologicalreferences,
us again thatwe are in thefirstmonth,April, because the Ram has run through
half his course and therefore,
as with April and March, that the paradigmatic
zodiacal opposition of Aries and Taurus is directlytranslatableonto, or as, the
sequence of metonymyunrolled by celestial rotation.
All this is a rathercomplicatedway of saying what fora competentreader
should presumablygo withoutsaying;but forthesake of argumentlet us assume
thattheinitial structuraldispositionof thesefirstfewimages is thensystematically
repeatedin the patternof images thatthepoem develops throughoutits opening
fewlines, so thattheseriesof oppositions which we mightsummarizeas wetand
dry,up and down, skyand earth,male and female,fecundityand sterility,
pagan
and Christian,inside and outside, near and far,health and illness-all function
in relationto each otherand to themselvesas kinds of mirrorimages,
structurally
indices,of thefirst
metaphorico-metonymic
structuringintroducedby theintersection of March and April-each of them graded as structuresuperinducedon
sequence. Let us even assume thatthe same thinghappens metrically,so thatthe
ictus on the unstressedposition that we get in April is structurally
relatedto the
stresson the stressedposition thatwe get with "March," and thatthisin turnsets
up a stressstructureof rhythmicand intonationalpatterningthatthepoem will
reserve for specificallymetaphorico-metonymic
emphasis-e.g., ". . . with his
" Let us also
sh6ure' soote/The dr6ughte
assume-again only forthesake of
...
and
in
of
the
ideal
structural
argument
pursuit
analysis-that the themesintroduced by our now hypotheticallystructuralizedPrologue imageryare in turn
developed in the tales themselves,and that this enlargementproceeds with the
same structuraldeterminationsas are sketchedout in thefirstfewlines,so thatthe
implicithierarchypresumedin theorderof monthsis whatfinallylies behind the

This content downloaded from 128.205.114.91 on Sun, 11 May 2014 16:23:28 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

56

OCTOBER

social hierarchyintowhich thepilgrimsfit,fromtheKnighton down to theMiller

(as well as the dictional hierarchythatgovernsthe mannerin which each tale is
decorouslyrelated),and that the primacyof male April to female March is the
structuralsourcenot only of thepatriarchalorientationof the marriagetales,but
also of presumptively
analogous arrangementsof cosmological and literaryorder
thatthe tales regularly,allegoricallyally with this-as, say,in The Wifeof Bath's
prologue and tale, wherefamilial,sexual, theological,and literary"authorities"
are all developed in termsof the hierarchicizedsexualityalready built into the
piercingof March by the potent,engenderingliquidityof April. Finally,so as to
complete this imaginary,exhaustivelystructuralanalysis, let us assume that the
relationof April to March,developedas structuresuperinducedon sequence,also
describesthemostgeneralliteraryfeaturesof The CanterburyTales as a whole, so
that,in the same way that Jakobson's metaphorizedmetonymiespoint both to
themselvesas signifiers
and to thestructureofsignifiedsfromwhich theyderive,so
too do we have in little with April-Marcha prototypicalenactmentof the
procedureby means of which Chaucer characteristically
manages to distancehis
textfromits own textuality-whetherin the way the tales commentupon each
otherby referenceto theircommon frame,or theway theypoint to themselvesby
steppingout of themselves,as withthe Pardoner'sclaims forhis own rhetoric,or,
in that culminatinginstanceof self-reflection
so dear to dialectical Chaucerians,
the way the narrator'stale of Sir Thopas lapses into theallegorical prose of the
Tale of Melibee, accomplishing therebyan instance of mirroringself-mockery
surpassed only by the absolute duplicityof the Retractionitself,whereChaucer
either turns Pardoner or steps out of literaturealtogether,but in either case
piously and conventionallydefersto theonly moral imperativesthathis allegorical systemallows him in the firstplace.
Having now assumed so much-and I realize thatto suggestthepossibility
or the shape of a completelysuccessful,all-encompassingstructuralanalysis of
The CanterburyTales is to assume a great deal-we are now entitledto ask in
what way this structureaccounts forthepoeticalityof thetext.In what sense can
our hypothesizedstructureexplain eitherthepleasureor themeaning takenfrom,
or generatedby,a textorganizedbytheprojectionof metaphoricequivalence onto
metonymicsuccession?The poem tells us thatwhen the sweetshowersof April
pierce thedroughtof March to theroot,when Zephyrusinspiresthecropsin every
woodland withhis sweetbreath,when small birdsbegin to make melody,"thanne
longen folk to goon on pilgrimages.,'How does the structuringof the firstfew
lines that we have now assumed manage to generate,or to justify,or to explain
this longing? How does it enticea readerfurtherinto the poem, leading him on
throughand into its sequencing?How is structure
extended,"longed," into time?
In the termsof my title,how does the structureof the poem yield its allegorical
desire?
For an answer, I turn to another famous essay by Jakobson in which he
applies the proceduresof structuralanalysis to phonemic patterning,and where

This content downloaded from 128.205.114.91 on Sun, 11 May 2014 16:23:28 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

The Structureof Allegorical Desire

57

he develops the theoryof distinctivephoneticfeatures,whichremainsthegreatest

achievementof structurallinguistics,recognizedas such even by linguists with
We should say in advance that it is
entirelydifferenttheoreticalperspectives.18
because of Jakobson'stheoreticalsuccesswithphonemes,a conceptualizationthat
of humanlyproduciblesounds to a fewsignificant
reducestheinfinity
phonological oppositions, that structurallinguisticshas become the prestigiousmodel for
disciplines whose fieldsare only marginally,or at least not obviously,relatedto
language per se. All of them readily pay the price of analogizing theirsubject
matterto language in exchange for the rigorous structuralitythat Jakobson's
methodprovides.
In principle, then-and my account will be perfunctoryparaphraseJakobson begins with Saussurean diacriticality,the thesis that we perceive
ratherthan as simple existentswhose being
positivitiesas systemsof differences
immediatelyimposes itselfupon our senses. We hear the structureddifferences
betweenphonemes ratherthan the phonemes themselves,as we know fromthe
factthatwhat is a significantsound to a speakerof one language may not evenbe
heard by the speakerof another.For each language, then,Jakobsonproposesthat
a systemof binaryphonological oppositions may be constructedwhose systematicitycan account forall the potentiallysignificantsounds thatcan be produced
within the language. This will be the phonological code of the langue that is
actualized in metonymicparole. These systemsnaturallyvaryfromlanguage to
language, dependingon thephonological structureof each, butwhatconcernsus
now are featuresthat,because of thestructureof thehuman mouth,are universal
phonological facts.Here, then,like a Ramist proposing his initial dichotomization,Jakobsonapplies structuralist
methodologyand searchesout whatwould be
the maximum binary opposition of which the mouth is capable, which he
discoversin thefirstsyllable,contrastofconsonantand vowel, transcribed
as /pa/.
The constituentsof this utterance,vocalic /a/ and the voiceless labial stop /p/,
in the mouth:viz., with/p/ thebuccal
representabsolute phonological difference
tractis closed at the frontwhereasin /a/ the tractis opened at theend as wide as
possible. As a labial stop,/p/ existsforbut a momentand requiresa minimunof
energyfor its articulation;in contrast,/a/ is a continual voicing of sound and
requires maximum energy.Where /p/ is the stopping of sound, /a/ is pure
as thelargest
vocality.For all thesediacriticalreasons,/pa/ is plausibly identified
binary opposition the mouth can articulate and as such, froma structuralist
perspective,is conceptually the firstsyllable. This theoreticalclaim is in turn
supportedby studiesin language acquisition and aphasia which reportthat/pa/
is both the firstutterancechildrenlearn and the last thataphasics lose-striking
empirical corroborationof Jakobson's structuralistclaim that language begins
18.
Roman Jakobsonand MorrisHalle, "Phonemic Patterning,"Fundamentalsof Language, The
Hague, Mouton, 1971,pp. 50-66.

This content downloaded from 128.205.114.91 on Sun, 11 May 2014 16:23:28 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

OCTOBER

58

and ends with thecombinationof vocalic /a/ withvoicelesslabial stop /p/ in the
primal utterance/pa/.
The hypothesisis clearlyingenious,and if we assimilatevoiceless/p/ to its
twin labial stop, voiced /b/,sound and sense begin in Jakobson'ssense to cohere
as, forexample, when we call the infantincapable of speech a baby,
structurally,
or when the Greekscall foreignerswhose speech is strangebarbaroibecause they
babble, as at theTower of Babel, or when we begin our alpha-betsbyjoining a to
b.19But /pa/ is only the beginningof a system.In orderto build a structureat
least two setsof oppositions are requiredso as to constructa seriesof proportions
and logoi thatcan be actualized in speech. Thus Jakobsonand the infantmust
identifya second binaryopposition, structurallyopposable to the first,so as to
specifya paradigmaticcode, and this theydo by introducingthenasal consonant
/m/.With the acquisition of /m/,the pure differentiality
thatwas firstpresented
by /pa/ is, as it were,plugged up, recuperated.As a nasal consonant,a continuant
sound, /m/combines thevocalityof /a/ with thepositionalityof /p/ at thefront
of themouth. As a littleof one and a littleoftheother,/m/is a kindofaverageor
collapse or junctureof the original opposition, just as metaphorand metonymy
seemed to collapse in Jakobson's theory.And once /m/ is articulated as a
distinctivefeaturein its own right,we have thediacriticalmaterialwithwhich to
establisha structureof phonological sound: /p/ and /m/being both opposed to
/a/, while /p/ and /m/ are also opposed to each other. As Jakobson puts it:
"Before thereappeared the consonantal opposition nasal/oral, consonant was
distinguishedfromvowel as closed tractfromopen tract.Once the nasal consonant has been opposed to the oral as presence to absence of the open tract,the
contrastconsonant/vowelis revaluedas presencevs. absence of a closed tract."20
Again, there is strikingcross-culturalempirical support for Jakobson's
claim. In nearlyeverynaturallanguage thathas been observed,some variationof
papa and mama or theirreversal,as in abba and ema, are the familiartermsfor
fatherand mother.2'But what I am concerned with now, quite apart from
whateverempirical power Jakobson'sinsightmightpossess, is how the firsttwo
termsof this series, /pa/ and /ma/, develop themselvesas a structure.We
rememberthatit is only with the introductionof thesecond opposition adduced
by/ma/ thatwe can saywe have a system.At thatpoint,each termin theseriescan
be seen as diacriticallysignificantwithrespectto itsopposition toanothertermin
We are justifiedin thusassimilating/p/ with/b/ because at thisstage thedistinctionbetween
19.
voiced and voicelesshas not yetbeen made. "As thedistinctionvoiced/voicelesshas notyetbeenmade,
thefirstconsonantmay be shiftingand sometimesindistinct,varyingbetweentypesof/b/and typesof
/p/, but still withina distinct'familyof sounds."' (R.M. Jones,Systemin Child Language, Cardiff,
Universityof Wales Press,1970,11,p. 85). The collation shows itselfin theorthographyforthesounds.
20.
Jakobsonand Halle, p. 51.
Roman Jakobson,"Why 'Mama' and 'Papa'?" Selected Writings,The Hague, Mouton, 1962,I,
21.
pp. 538-45.

This content downloaded from 128.205.114.91 on Sun, 11 May 2014 16:23:28 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

The Structureof Allegorical Desire

59

the structure.Until then,however,/pa/, insofaras it signifiesanything,signifies

only the sheerdiacriticalitythroughwhich thesystemas a whole is thought.But
this original differentialdeterminationis thereuponlost, retroactively
effaced,
when the introductionof /ma/ "revalues" the firstvalueless contrastconsonant/
vowel, or silence/sound,i.e., /pa/, as "presencevs. absence of a closed tract."In
otherwords,/pa/ loses its original statusas markof pure diacriticalitywhen it is
promoted to the level of significantsignifierwithinthe systemas a whole. This
new significant/pa/ is utterlyunrelatedto thefirstsimplydiacritical/pa/ thatit
replaces,or, as Derridawould say,thatit places undererasure.And it is precisely
this occultation of the original /pa/, now structurallyunspeakable because
revalued as something else entirely,that allows the system to functionas a
structurein thefirstplace. In short,thestructureof significantsounds musterase
the original markingof diacriticalityupon which it depends and fromwhich it
emergesin orderto signifyanythingat all. In a formulationwhose resonancewith
contemporaryliterarycriticismwill be embarrassinglyobvious, thereis buried in
the structurality
of any structurethe ghostlyorigin of thatstructure,because the
will
be
origin
structurallydeterminedas a ghost,a palpably absent origin, by
virtueof theverystructurality
it fathers.Everystructuremustbegin with such an
of its beginning, with such a murder of its
retroactive
revaluation
effacing,
diacritical source, just as Freud said when he identifiedthe origin of human
culturein the murderof the father,the primal /pa/, who lives on only in and as
the guiltymemoryresponsibleforthe structureof society.22
Turning back now to the opening of The CanterburyTales-which it will
now be clear I selected preciselybecause therein the intersectionof April and
March we have also thejunctureof /pa/ and /ma/-we can answer thequestion
of how an allegorybegins and whyit continues.What we can say is thatwithits
poeticalitydefinedas structuresuperinducedupon metonymy,
allegoryinitiates
and continuallyrevivifies
itsown desire,a desirebornofitsown structuring.
Every
metaphoris always a littlemetonymicbecause in orderto have a metaphorthere
must be a structure,and where thereis a structurethereis already piety and
nostalgia for the lost origin through which the structureis thought. Every
metaphoris a metonymyof itsown origin,itsstructurethrustinto timeby itsvery
With the piercingof March by April,then,theallegorical structure
structurality.
thus enunciatedhas alreadylost its centerand therebydiscovereda project:to recover the loss dis-coveredby the structureof language and of literature.In
thematicterms,this journey back to a foreclosedorigin writesitselfout as a
pilgrimageto thesacredfoundingshrine,made such bymurder,thatis themotive
of its movement.In termsof literaryresponse,thestructuring
of thetextholds out
the promise of a meaning that it will also perpetually defer,an image of
hermeneutictotalitymartyredand consecratedby and as thepoetical. This is the
22.

Sigmund Freud, Totem and Taboo, S.E., 13, pp. 141-46.

This content downloaded from 128.205.114.91 on Sun, 11 May 2014 16:23:28 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

OCTOBER

60

formal destiny of everyallegory insofar as allegory is definableas continued

metaphor.Distanced at thebeginningfromits source,allegorywill setout on an
increasinglyfutilesearch fora signifierwith which to recuperatethe fractureof
and at its source, and with each successivesignifierthe fractureand the search
begin again: a structureof continual yearning,theinsatiabledesireof allegory.2"
Perhaps this is one reason why,as Angus Fletcherhas remarked,allegory
itsgranddesign.24So
seemsbyitsnatureto be incompletable,neverquite fulfilling
of allegorywithobsessional neurosis,which,
too, thisexplains theformalaffinity
as Freud develops it in the case of the Wolf Man, derivespreciselyfromsuch a
searchforlost origins,epitomizedin theconsequences of theprimal scene,which
answers the child's question of where he came fromwith a diacritical solution
which he cannot accept, and which his neurosis thereuponrepressesand denies.
of psychoanalysisnot only with
But this would in turn suggest the affinity
with
theoreticalconcern of the Wolf
For
the
but
also
obsessionality,
allegory.25
Man case, argued out in the context of a polemic with Jung, is preciselyto
determinewhetherthesceneofparentalintercourse,thepiercingof /ma/by/pa/,
observedby the Wolf Man was indeed a primal scene or insteada primal fantasy.
And when Freud,relyingon a hypothesisofuniversal,cross-culturalphylogenetic
whetherwe choose to regard
inheritance,tellsus thatit is a matterof indifference
it as either,we may well wonderwhetherthe theoryof theprimal scene,which is
in some sense at the centerof everypsychoanalysis,is not itselfthe theoretical
primal fantasyof psychoanalysis,a theoreticalorigin thatthetheoreticalstructure
of Freud's thoughtobliges him to displace to therecessesof mythichistory.26
I am concernedhere with the way literarystructuresare thought,and so feelno obligation to
23.
restrictmy argumentto cases which explicitlyinstanceJakobson'sphonological thesis.Nevertheless,
in thecourseof writingthisessay I have enjoyedcollectingconcreteexamples,as in thefirstline of the
Iliad, fromwhich I take myepigraph, wherethe wrathfulM7 is joined to thestresson [17 in thefirst
syllableof Lacan's and Achilles's Name of the Father.With regardto thepastoral traditionI focuson
in theessay,fromChaucer's Prologue throughEliot, we should thinkofMarvell'sThe Garden,which
opens with another Pa-Ma-"How vainly men themselvesamaze/To win the palm, the oak, or
bays"-and tellsanothernostalgic storyof Eden lost throughdiacriticality:"Two paradises 'twerein
one/To live in paradise alone." But thereare also examples fromthenovel,e.g., The Charterhouseof
Parma (Parme), or MansfieldPark, or "Stately,plump, Buck Mulligan," or, my favorite,because its
threesyllables sum up Lacan's theoryof the acquisition of language throughthe castrationof the
paternalmetaphor:Moby Dick.
24.
Fletcher,pp. 174-80.
The issue of Freud's and psychoanalyticobsessionalityis a subjectforanotheressay.It takesthe
25.
hermeneuticformof attemptingto plug up gaps. The culminatingmomentof Freud's analysisof the
obsessional Rat Man comes when Freud's interpretationparticipates in the Rat Man's deepest
homosexual fantasies:"Was he perhaps thinkingof impalement?'No, not that;. . . thecriminalwas
tied up . . .'-he expressed himself so indistinctlythat I could not immediatelyguess in what
position-' .. . a pot was turnedupside down on his buttocks. .. some ratswere put into it. .. and
they. . .'-he had again got up, and was showingeverysign of horrorand resistance-'bored theirway
in . . .'-Into his anus, I helped him out." ("Notes upon a Case of Obsessional Neurosis,"S.E., 10,p.
166). ProfessorMurraySchwartzsuggestedthisreadingof theRat Man to me. I would say thatwe can
followout the same language and desirenot only in Freud's biography,but in psychoanalytictheory
a phenomenological sodomy.
and metatheory,
"From the Historyof an InfantileNeurosis," S.E., 17, p. 97: "I should myselfbe glad to know
26.

This content downloaded from 128.205.114.91 on Sun, 11 May 2014 16:23:28 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

The Structureof Allegorical Desire

61

The question becomesperhaps more urgentwhen we recall the theoretical

statusof what forFreudian metapsychologyis itsown maximum binaryopposition, namely, the instincttheorywith its dualism of Eros and Death. For to the
extentthat thesetwo instinctsare different,
it is only insofaras therecuperative,
of
Eros
are
as
unifyingimpulses
provoked responseto thedifferentiating
impulses
of death,a /ma/to thethanatotic/pa/. Andeven beforethis,death itselfis already
conceived by Freud as such a dualism, extended into time as the compulsive,
obsessive repetitionof its own diacriticality,i.e., the repetitioncompulsion,
which is the vicious Freudian metonymof the metaphoricityof death. Is it any
wonder, then, that forevidence of all of this Freud can in Beyond thePleasure
Principle but point to another piece of allegorical literature,to Plato's storyof
Aristophanes' storyof divinelydiacriticalizedhermaphrodites,yetanothercase
wheredesireoriginatesin and as the loss of structure.And it is by no means accidental thatFreud develops thesesame Aristophanicthemeselsewhere,as in the
allegoryof his gendertheory,with its unendingquest bybothhetero-sexesforthe
castratedphallus, powerfulonly in thedivision it teachesin its loss.27 And so too
with psychoanalyticinterpretation,which completes itselfonly when it points
mutelyto that
... passage in even the most thoroughlyinterpreteddream which has
to be left obscure . . . a tangle of dream-thoughtswhich cannot be
unravelledand which moreoveradds nothing to our knowledgeof the
content of the dream. This is the dream's navel, the spot where it
reachesdown into the unknown. The dream-thoughts
to which we are
led by interpretationcannot from the nature of things, have any
definiteendings; theyare bound to branchout in everydirectioninto
the intricatenetworkof our worldof thought.It is at some point where
this meshworkis particularlyclose thatthedream-wishgrowsup, like
a mushroomout of its mycelium.28
Does this mean, then,that psychoanalysisas a science is "mere" allegory?
Does the factthat the exposition of Freud's theoryof the psycheacts out its own
theorizationmean that psychoanalysisis but a symptomaticinstanceof its own
thwarteddesire to know: a neurotic epistemophilia at the end of a bankrupt
traditionof philosophy?It is thanksto Lacan thatwe can see in this theoretical
self-reflection
of psychoanalysis,mirrorof Freud's original analysis of himself,
both thehistoricalnecessityand thescientific
validityofpsychoanalyticallegoricization. For when Lacan makesthesubjectan effect
of thesignifier,
when he defines
whetherthe primal scene in mypatient'scase was a phantasyor a real experience,but takingother
similarcases into account,I mustadmit thattheanswer to thisquestion is not in facta matterof very
greatimportance."
In "The Dissolution of The Oedipus Complex," "The InfantileGenital Organization,"and
27.
"Some Psychical Consequences of the Anatomical Distinctionbetweenthe Sexes," S.E., 19.
The Interpretationof Dreams, S.E., 5, p. 525. See also 4, p. 11ln.
28.

This content downloaded from 128.205.114.91 on Sun, 11 May 2014 16:23:28 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

OCTOBER

62

the unconscious as the "discourseof the Other" (let us note, a directtranslation

to speak), he establishespsyof the etymologyof allegory: &XXos,
other;&yopebw,
that
science
whose
is the split in the subject
concern
as
choanalysis
precisely
occasioned by thesubject'saccession to language. Ifpsychoanalysishas discovered
anything,it is preciselythisloss of theselfto theselfthatwe vaguelyreferto when
we speak of thefunctionof theunconscious. And what Lacan has taughtus, in a
seriesof blindinglylucid formulationsstilldefensivelyresistedby thepsychoanalyticestablishment,is thatin the same way that The CanterburyTales is divided
and directedwhen itenterslanguage, so too is thepsychewhen it learnsto speak.29
This famous Lacanian barringof the subject-the loss of being thatcomes from
oneselfin language as a meaning,correlativewith the formationof
re-presenting
the unconscious and the onset of desire,the constructionof the Oedipal subject,
and theacquisition of a place in theculturalorderthroughtherecognitionof the
Name of the Father-is what makes the psyche a critical allegoryof itself,and
what justifiespsychoanalysisas the allegoryof thatallegory.It is in searchof the
meaning of thisdivisionof thesubject throughthedialecticsof desireoccasioned
of thelogos thatpsychoanalysisfindsits own epistemological
by thestructurality
projectand its own initiatorydesire.
If, then,the structureof Freud's thought,as it develops,becomesimmanent
as theme,if Freud's theoryrepeatedlyvalorizes those veryimages of loss which
make his conceptual representationspossible in the firstplace, this is to say no
more than thatFreud's hermeneuticsare at one with the object of theirinquiry.
This is not theinternalistfallacy:rather,it is thewaypsychoanalysisrealizesitself
as practice. For psychoanalysisis no empty theory;it is instead the operative
science of the unconscious, and the unconscious is preciselythatpart of the self
lost to the self by its articulation,just as Freud's theoryembodies itselfonly
Or so the heroic,
through its endless, questing theoreticalself-deconstruction.
of
Freud
and
the
allegorical example
rigorouslyfigurativestyleof Lacan persuasivelysuggest.
This is to see in psychoanalyticstructureand in psychoanalyticstructuralism theconclusion of a searchforwisdom thathas motivatedWesternphilosophy
fromits verybeginning. In the declension of theoreticalspeculation about the
order of order that begins as ontology,cosmology,theology,and that,starting
with the Renaissance, is internalizedin the sciences of man as anthropology,
sociology,psychology,thereoccurs a completingor a breakingof thehermeneu29.
These themesrun throughall of Lacan's work.In Ecrits,see "The MirrorStageas Formativeof
the Function of the I," "The Functionand Field of Speech and Language in Psychoanalysis,""On a
Question Preliminaryto any Possible Treatmentof Psychosis," "The Significationof the Phallus,"
and "The Subversionof the Subject and the Dialectic of Desire in theFreudian Unconscious." With
regard to the occultation induced by metaphor,see especially Lacan's formulasformetaphorand
metonymyin "The Agencyof theLetterin the Unconscious,or Reason since Freud." See also myown
"Gnosis and the Piety of Metaphor: The Gospel of Truth," forthcomingin The Rediscoveryof
Gnosticism:Studies in theHistoryof Religion, ed. BentleyLayton, Leiden, Brill, 1980.

This content downloaded from 128.205.114.91 on Sun, 11 May 2014 16:23:28 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

The Structureof Allegorical Desire

63

tic circle when psychology,definingthe psycheas an effectof the logos, is itself

in KennethBurke'sphrase,into logology.30This is theHeideggerean
transformed,
theme straightforwardly
developed in Lacan's thought. And, of course, it is
preciselyagainst this appeal to the orderof orderand the meaning of meaning
that Derrida has directedhis critique of Lacan, seeing in such a psychoanalysis
of Westernlogocentricmetaphysics,where
nothing but the inheritedaftereffects
the phallus is the castrating,fascistictranscendentalsignifiedthat condemns
man's desire to a foreverunsatisfyingnostalgia forthelost origin of a chimerical
golden age.31As an alternative,as we now all know, Derrida proposes insteada
metaphysics and a psychoanalysis of differenceitself, la diffbranceof both
structureand time, to be comprehendedby a philosophy avant la lettre,before
structure,before logos: in short, a philosophy of the effacingand trace of
prelinguistic,diacritical/pa/.
But as Derrida is well aware, and as he repeatedlyreminds the most
enthusiasticDerrideans,thisreturnto structuralist
firstprinciplescan occur only
afterthe structuralfact,for it is only in structurethat the origin and its loss
but it is alwayseventually
emerges.The sign is always thoughtthroughdifference,
out
to
the
conclusion
that
erases
the
difference
thought
signifying
upon which it
cannot be thoughtwithoutthe trace."32Thus,
depends, which is why"difference
if Lacan is logocentric,it is because he characterizesthe firstlogocentriclapse
through which diffbranceitself will be thematizedand conceived, so that any
criticismof Lacan will alreadyhave committedtheLacanian lapse. This accounts
for the positivist illusion that there are things beforedifferences,but it also
explains the intrinsicbelatednessof everydeconstruction.33
This is also why any of the so-calledpost-structuralist
critiquesof structurof structuralism.
alism, including Derrida's,mustbe seen as mereaftereffects
They
are alreadydefined,by the criticismimplicitin theirpost and in theirhyphen,as
theallegorical responseto a metaphorof structureand a structureofmetaphorin
which theyare alreadyimplicatedand bywhich theyare alreadyimplied. Whether
the origin is perpetually displaced by Derridean diffbrance,
or whether it is
30.
KennethBurke,"TerministicScreens," Language as Symbolic Action,Berkeley,Universityof
CaliforniaPress,1966,p. 47, and The Rhetoricof Religion: Studies in Logology, Berkeley,University
of California Press, 1970.
31.
Jacques Derrida,"The Purveyorof Truth," Yale FrenchStudies,52 (1975), 31-113.
32.
Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology,trans.G.C. Spivak, Baltimore,John Hopkins University
Press, 1974,p. 57.
33.
For this reason, I thinkit is a mistaketo assimilate Derridaand Lacan each to theother,and
to see in thecriticalpracticeof both an equivalent responseto textuality,e.g., GayatriSpivak, "The
Letteras Cutting Edge," Yale FrenchStudies, 55/56,pp. 208-226; Barbara Johnson,"The Frame of
Reference:Poe, Lacan, Derrida," Yale French Studies, 55 56, pp. 457-505. This is to reduce the
historicalimportancethattheirconfrontationrepresentsboth forpsychoanalysisand forphilosophy.
Derridais verymuch son to Lacan's father,which is whyhe attemptsthecriticalparricideof "Purveyor
of Truth" or Positions. In this sense, Derridais quite rightto characterizethe Lacanian enterprisein
termsof a datedand passe Hegelian project.On theotherhand, in accord withtheFreudianparadigm,
Derrida'sphilosophical success only makes the mortified
Lacan thatmuch more authoritative.

This content downloaded from 128.205.114.91 on Sun, 11 May 2014 16:23:28 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

64

OCTOBER

historicallylocated and crystallizedby Girard's catastropheof "no-difference"

whatsoever, the thematicvalorization of origin as loss survives.34And poststructuralismtherefore
gains its prestigeonly insofaras it thuspro-longsitselfas
the criticalmetonymyof the structuralist
metaphor.
We musttherefore
stressagain thesensein which thescientificthematization
of structurethatwe findin psychoanalysisspells an end to thetraditionofliterary
Alexandria.For when psychoanalallegoryas we have knownit sincefirst-century
ysis itselfturnsinto allegory,criticismfor the firsttime in our traditionmust
admit to the irrecuperabledistance between itselfand its object. Having consciouslyformulatedtheallegoryof its own desire,criticismmustawaken fromits
dreamof interpretation
to a daylightwheredesireis but thememoryof thenight's
desire.We have posited it as a law of literaryformthatthediacriticality
effacedby
literarystructureemergesas themein the registerof loss. Our example has been
the way pilgrimage is thematizedin The CanterburyTales, but we mighthave
illustratedthepoint withanyof a wide varietyof texts.We may posit it as a second
law thatprofoundlyself-conscioustextseventuallyrealize theirresponsibilityfor
the loss upon which theirliterarinessdepends,and thatwhen this happens this
to loss to sinresponsibilityis itselfthematizedas sin. From silence to difference
and sometimes,in textswhose literaryintegrityis absolute, throughsin back to
silence once again, as in the Retraction with which The CanterburyTales
concludes. These laws of literaryform also apply to the structureof literary
history,whetherwe consider the development of an individual author or the
evolution of a literarygenre.
But thisleaves open a way forpoetryand forthehistoryof poetryto remain
literaryeven in theirsilence,whereascriticismceases to be criticismwhen it turns
mute. Because the thingsof poetryare words,poetrycan, in a way thatcriticism
cannot, conclude itselfwhen it cannot continue. When poetrycan findno new
words with which to maintain the meaning of its longing, it can lapse into
significantliterarysilence, therebypro-longing its desire ad infinitum.But
criticism,whose things are not words but the meanings of words, meanings
foreverforeclosedby words,will findin silenceonly theimpetusforfurther
speech
and furtherlonging, which it will thereuponthematizeas itsown responsibility
fortheloss of meaning.Wherea poem can be closed poeticallyeven bya gestureof
self-abandon,criticism,dis-coveringthe futilityof itspro-ject,can onlygo on and
on, frustratingly
repeatingits own frustration,
increasinglyobsessed withitsown
sense of sin-unless, of course, in the psychoanalyticsense, it projectsits own
critical unhappiness onto literature,whose self-deconstruction
would then be
understoodas criticism.35

34.
35.

Rene Girard, Violenceand the Sacred, Baltimore,John Hopkins UniversityPress, 1977.

See, forexample,GayatriSpivak: "I would like to suggestthepossibilityofconceivingpoetryin

This content downloaded from 128.205.114.91 on Sun, 11 May 2014 16:23:28 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

The Structureof Allegorical Desire

65

Thus it is that when the traditionof English pastoral that begins with
Chaucer's Prologue findsits own conclusion, it remainsliteraryeven in its selfdisgust. And Eliot, drawing the thematicstructureof the genre to its absurdly
melancholic,ultimatereduction,can stillarticulatea meaning pre-dicativeof yet
more poetic desire:
April is the cruelestmonth,breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memoryand desire,stirring
Dull roots with springrain.
Eliot, withhis habitofmakinga beginningout ofends,can imagine thatthe
gap in landscape poetry that his poem prolepticallyprepares will become a
significantsilence in a perpetuallymeaningfulliterarytraditionthatwill forever
feedmeaning back into his Wasteland.In contrast,Freud,whose Judaic thematizations of guilt and sin, as in Civilization and Its Discontents,are at least as
forcefuland serious as any of Eliot's Anglican regrets,can do no more than
continue to repeathis themeswithincreasinglyphlegmaticand preciselynuanced
resignation,as in the fragmentwith which his corpus movingly concludes,
entitled"The Splittingof theEgo in theProcess
propheticallyand self-reflectively
of Defence."36This is the insight into self-divisionand sin thatpsychoanalysis
leaves as legacy to contemporarycritical thought,which continues to repeat
Freud's themes,though perhaps withoutthe rigorof Freud's resignation.Here I
referto that note of eschatological salvation thatsounds so strangelyin current
of difference
literarydiscourse,as when Girard looks forwardto a revivification
throughsacralizingviolence, or when Derrida, telling us it is not a question of
choosing, includes himselfamongstthose who "turntheireyesaway in thefaceof
a totallyopposite way to a common understandingthat would see poetic language as thatin which
sign and senseare identical,as in music,as thatwhich tendsto maintain thedistancebetweenthesign
and its semanticmeaning. To support myargument,I will have recourseto thenotion of allegory."
(GayatriSpivak, "Allegorieet historiede la poesie: Hypothesede Travail," Pobtique,8 (1971),p. 427).
In effect,
I am suggestingthatwe are still entitledto retainthe idea of thebook, thepoem, theartifact,
as opposed to theinfinite,indefinite,
unboundedextensionof whatnowadaysis called textuality.Thus
I also maintain the validityof the distinctionbetweenliteratureand its criticism,though,in accord
with my argumentabove, thisdistinctionwould only have become operativerelativelyrecentlywith
theconclusion of psychoanalytichermeneutics.What distinguishestheliteraryfromthecriticalis that
the logocentricbook or poem can effecttheclosure of representationpreciselybecause it can structure
silence into its discourse,just as language does with the combination of consonant and vowel. The
resultis a polysemic,structuredliteraryuniverse.If contemporarycriticismcan do this,it chooses not
to, and thusmaintains itselfonly as the inconclusivetextualitythatit attributesto literature.I realize
thatDerridawould characterizethedistinctionbetweenstructureand timethatstructuralism
proposes
as dependentupon, in Heidegger'sphrase,a "vulgar concept of time" (see Grammatology,p. 72). My
concern,however,is with how theseconceptshave functionedand continue to functionas decisively
powerful metaphors in the Western literarycritical tradition,regardlessof how philosophically
untenable theymay have been forall thesethousandsof years.
36.
S.E., 23, pp. 275-278. The essay takes up the "riftin the ego which neverheals but which
increasesas timegoes on" (p. 276). Freud's illustrativeexample is castrationdisavowal.

This content downloaded from 128.205.114.91 on Sun, 11 May 2014 16:23:28 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

66

OCTOBER

the as yet unnameable which is proclaiming itselfand which can do so, as is

necessarywhenevera birthis in the offing,only under the species of the nonformof monstrosity."37
species, in theformless,mute,infant,and terrifying
It would seem by the rules of the endgame Beckettwrote in Waitingfor
Godot thatcontemporarythoughthere turnspastoral nostalgia fora golden age
into the brute expectationsof a sentimentalapocalypticism. But we will wait
foreverfortherough beastto slouch itsway to Bethlehem;so too,fora philosophy
or a literarycriticismof what the thundersaid: DA.38

37.
Jacques Derrida, "Structure,Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences," The
Languages of Criticismand the Sciences of Man, eds. Richard Macksey and Eugenio Donato,
Baltimore,John Hopkins UniversityPress,1970,p. 265. If Girardis thetheoreticianofan unthinkable
sacredOrigin,and Derrida thephilosopherof an indefinitely
deferredOrigin, thenFoucault, withhis
of
inexplicable transitionsbetweenepistemicframes,is, despitehis disclaimers,thepost-structuralist
millenarianism: "In attemptingto uncover
missing middles. And Foucault shares post-structuralist
thedeepeststrataof Westernculture,I am restoringto our silentand apparentlyimmobilesoil itsrifts,
its instability,its flaws;and it is thesame ground thatis once morestirringunderour feet."(Michel
Foucault, The Order of Things, New York, Vintage, 1970,p. xxiv.)
38.
See Lacan, "Function and Field of Speech and Language," Ecrits,esp. pp. 106-107.

This content downloaded from 128.205.114.91 on Sun, 11 May 2014 16:23:28 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions