| No matter how intent interpretation is on the object of its study, it must always position itself in the world of readers, and stake a claim to one or another ontology. Allegoresis is a particularly useful form of hermeneutics for revealing social contexts, precisely because it is so disrespectful of the apparent letter of the text. Radical declarations that a given text does not at all mean what it seems to say, divide readers into those who know the secrets and those who do not, and thereby also assert enormous authority for the interpreter who marks off the boundaries of such groups.; Chapter One makes an argument that the social valences of allegory and allegoresis cannot be located in the disruptive mechanics of the allegorical sign. Chapters Two and Three outline two separate models of how social stratification is implicated in the standard models of allegoresis which develop in the European and Chinese traditions. In the European model, derived largely from late-classical exegesis of Homer, allegoresis is cast in the terms of earlier mystery-cults: the many read texts shallowly, but the few are gifted and blessed with understanding. In contrast, the Chinese model proposes social allegoresis akin to patronage relations. In this scheme, derived from exegesis of the Lyrics of Chu, individual poets are themselves conceived as allegorical texts. The poet's person is a coded secret, unappreciated by his own age, but aspiring to appreciation by patron-like readers of the future tradition. Chapters Four and Five demonstrate how each of the two models can reveal hidden aspects of the culture foreign to it, thus demonstrating how standardized cultural conceptions can hide social truths as well as explicate them. |
