A GRAMMATICAL APPROACH TO PERSONIFICATION ALLEGORY 167

sonification is one of the few technical

successful and unsuccessful, personifica-
tions; but if prosopopoeia was success-
devices common in more than a metaphori-
fully used it was frequently thought of as cal sense to both the fine arts and to
of the essence of poetic creativity.14 Yet the
literature. In poetry, painting, or sculpture
eighteenth century did not, on the whole, today, we rarely find victory, reason, or
prolong the action of personifications fame
as appearing as a noble lady or an
the Middle Ages loved to do. It favoredupright
a man. If we do have occasional
more static, pictorial type of personifica-
sculpture entitled "Truth" or "The Spirit
tion allegory. Dr. Johnson in his Life ofof1776," they are either hopelessly old-
Milton reveals this preference by writing
fashioned or something else altogether.
"to give them [personifications of Fame Perhaps, as we have suggested, only in
and Victory] any real employment or
political cartoons do we still find significant
ascribe to them any material agency isuses of static personification, and even
to make them allegorical no longer, but
here it is usually limited to "Uncle Sam"
to shock the mind by ascribing effects or
to "John Bull" or a frightened lady,
non-entity."'15 "Peace," and the like. However, per-
Perhaps a partial explanation for this sonifications were common in Renaissance
eighteenth-century love of relatively static
and post-Renaissance art.
and descriptive allegory is due to the This type of static personification alle-
impact of painting and sculpture. Of all gory was by no means unknown to the
the sister arts, eighteenth-century poetryMiddle Ages, but it was less common than
preferred painting. Because of technical dynamic or narrative allegory. Describing
limitations and its iconological nature, per-
wall paintings or buildings such as temples,
the
14 Of all the eighteenth-century comments on personifica- late classical trope of ekphrasis, was
tion allegory (many conveniently summarized in Earl R.
Wasserman, "The Inherent Values of Eighteenth-Century widespread and was a favorite mode down
Personification," PMLA, LXV [1950], 435-63, which also has
some valuable general remarks about its use in that period), to the eighteenth century. Even with this
perhaps only George Campbell's (The Philosophy of Rhetoric,
edition of 1834, New York, pp. 296-99) openly puts the matter type of personification, the emphasis is on,
somewhat as I have. The other commentators more or less
take it for granted. Campbell writes: "when the concrete is and the metaphoric content is in, the
used for the abstract, there is, in the first place, a real personi-
fication, the subject being in fact a mere quality both inani- predicate. Although it may involve any
mate and insensible: nor do we lose the particularity implied
in the abstract, because, where this trope is judiciously used, syntactic relationship of which the noun in
there must be something in the sentence which fixes the attention
especially on that quality" (p. 299; my italics). For some recent English is capable, personification allegory,
treatments of personification allegory in the Renaissance and
eighteenth century besides those already mentioned and to be in most of its manifestations, is in a basic
mentioned later, see Chester F. Chapin, Personification in
Eighteenth-Century English Poetry (New York, 1955); sense extended or simple predicative
Bertrand H. Bronson, "Personification Reconsidered," New
Light on Dr. Johnson, Essays on the Occasion of his 250th metaphor.16
Birthday, ed. Frederick W. Hilles (New Haven, Conn., 1959),
pp. 189-231 (a reworking of his earlier article with the same Personification allegory, whether static
title in ELH, XIV [1947], 63-77); Joshua McClennan, On the
Meaning and Function of Allegory in the English Renaissance (descriptive) or dynamic (narrative), has
("University of Michigan Contributions in Modern Phi-
lology," No. 6, April, 1947); Harry Berger, Jr., The Allegorical slightly different functions in different
Temper, Vision and Reality in Book II of Spenser's Faerie
Queene ("Yale Studies in English," No. 137 [New Haven, literary genres. Although there is a com-
Conn., 1957]); Ellen Douglas Leyburn, Satiric Allegory,
Mirror of Man ("Yale Studies in English," No. 130 [New mon ground to all its manifestations, it fills
Haven, Conn., 1956]); Jean H. Hagstrum, The Sister Arts:
The Tradition of Literary Pictorialism and English Poetry from different roles in different literary contexts.
Dryden to Gray (Chicago, 1958); Norman MacLean, "Per-
sonification but Not Poetry," ELH, XXIII (1956), 163-70, We shall omit short personification pas-
and his "From Action to Image: Theories of the Lyric in the
Eighteenth Century," Critics and Criticism, Ancient and sages and refer briefly to its functions in
Modern, ed. R. S. Crane (Chicago, 1952), pp. 408-60; and
Edward A. Bloom, "The Allegorical Principle," ELH, dialogue or debate and in apostrophes.
XVIII (1951), 163-90.
16 Robert Frank in his very interesting article, "The Art of
15 Quoted in Bloom, p. 184. Johann George Sulzer, Reading Medieval Personification-Allegory," ELH, XX
Allgemeine Theorie der sch6nen Kiinste ... (Leipzig, 1771- (1953), 237-50, following L. L. Camp, makes this point too
1774) in his article on Allegory (pp. 27 ff.) also speaks of thein less linguistic fashion by referring to the action as carrying
dangers of letting personification go on for too long (p. 33). the secondary meaning.

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