Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-4rdpn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-09T09:43:00.956Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Allusion

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Gregory Machacek
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The study of allusion has been beset by limiting assumptions, conceptual murkiness, and terminological imprecision; moreover, many poststructuralist theorists regard such study as having been superseded by newer conceptions of intertextuality. This essay seeks to clarify the nature of allusion and the terminology by which it is analyzed and to place it on a firmer footing within poststructuralist literary criticism. I distinguish two forms of allusion often conflated-learned reference and phraseological adaptation–and elucidate the elements of a phraseological adaptation. I distinguish diachronic allusion from synchronic intertextuality, as poststructuralist theorists insist should be done, but then suggest how coordinating the two can enrich the analytic power of each way of conceiving textual interrelation.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 122 , Issue 2 , March 2007 , pp. 522 - 536
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 2007

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

Alter, Robert. The Pleasures of Reading in an Ideological Age. New York: Simon, 1989.Google Scholar
Barthes, Roland. “From Work to Text.” Textual Strategies: Perspectives in Post-structuralist Criticism. Ed. Harari, Josué V. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1979. 73–81.Google Scholar
Ben-Porat, Ziva. “The Poetics of Literary Allusion.” Poetics and Theory of Literature 1 (1976): 105–28.Google Scholar
Bloom, Harold. A Map of Misreading. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1975.Google Scholar
Clarke, Howard. Homer's Readers: A Historical Introduction to the Iliad and the Odyssey. London: Assoc. UP, 1981.Google Scholar
Culler, Jonathan. “Presupposition and Intertextuality.” The Pursuit of Signs: Semiotics, Literature, Deconstruction. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1981. 100–18.Google Scholar
Derrida, Jacques. Spurs: Nietzsche's Styles. Trans. Barbara Harlow. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1978.Google Scholar
Dobranski, Stephen B. Readers and Authorship in Early Modern England. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2005.Google Scholar
Eliot, T. S. “The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock.” The Complete Poems and Plays, 1909–1950. New York: Harcourt, 1952. 3–7.Google Scholar
Eliot, T. S. The Waste Land. The Complete Poems and Plays, 1909–1950. New York: Harcourt, 1952. 37–55.Google Scholar
Flannagan, Roy, ed. The Riverside Milton. By John Milton. Boston: Houghton, 1998.Google Scholar
Fowler, Alastair, ed. Paradise Lost. By John Milton. London: Longman, 1968.Google Scholar
Garner, Richard. From Homer to Tragedy: The Art of Allusion in Greek Poetry. London: Routledge, 1990.Google Scholar
Gérard, Genette. Palimpsestes: La littérature au second degré. Paris: Seuil, 1982.Google Scholar
Guillory, John. “Canon.” Critical Terms for Literary Study. Ed. Lentricchia, Frank and McLaughlin, Thomas. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1990. 233–49.Google Scholar
Hale, John K. “The Classical Literary Tradition.” A Companion to Milton. Ed. Corns, Thomas N. Oxford: Blackwell, 2001. 22–36.Google Scholar
Hale, John K. “Milton Playing with Ovid.” Milton Studies 25.3 (1989): 3–19.Google Scholar
Hollander, John. The Figure of Echo: A Mode of Allusion in Milton and After. Berkeley: U of California P, 1981.Google Scholar
Homer. Homeri Opera. Ed. Monroe, David T. and Allen, Thomas W. 3rd ed. 4 vols. Oxford: Clarendon, 1920.Google Scholar
Homer. Iliad. Trans. Richmond Lattimore. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1961.Google Scholar
Homer. Odyssey. Trans. Richmond Lattimore. New York: Harper, 1975.Google Scholar
Housman, A. E. “Terence, This Is Stupid Stuff.” Collected Poems and Selected Prose. Ed. Ricks, Christopher. London: Penguin, 1988. 89–90.Google Scholar
Hughes, Merritt Y., ed. John Milton: Complete Poems and Major Prose. By John Milton. New York: Macmillan, 1985.Google Scholar
Hume, Patrick. Annotations on Milton's Paradise Lost. London, 1695.Google Scholar
Julia, Kristeva. “The Bounded Text.” Trans. Thomas Gora, Alice Jardine, and Leon S. Roudiez. Desire in Language: A Semiotic Approach to Literature and Art. Ed. Roudiez. New York: Columbia UP, 1980. 36–63.Google Scholar
Julia, Kristeva. Revolution in Poetic Language. Trans. Margaret Waller. New York: Columbia UP, 1984.Google Scholar
Julia, Kristeva. “Word, Dialogue, and Novel.” Trans. Thomas Gora, Alice Jardine, and Leon S. Roudiez. Desire in Language: A Semiotic Approach to Literature and Art. Ed. Roudiez. New York: Columbia UP, 1980. 64–91.Google Scholar
Levertov, Denise. “O Taste and See.” O Taste and See. New York: New Directions, 1962. 53.Google Scholar
Melbourne, Jane. “Biblical Intertextuality in Samson Agonistes.” SEL 36 (1996): 111–27.Google Scholar
Milton, John. “Lycidas.” The Works of John Milton. Ed. Patterson, Frank Allen et al. Vol. 1. New York: Columbia UP, 1931–40. 18 vols. 76–83.Google Scholar
Milton, John. Paradise Lost. The Works of John Milton. Ed. Patterson, Frank Allen et al. Vol. 2. New York: Columbia UP, 1931–40. 18 vols. 1–401.Google Scholar
Montrose, Louis. “Professing the Renaissance: The Poetics and Politics of Culture.” The New Historicism. Ed. Veeser, H. Aram. New York: Routledge, 1989. 15–36.Google Scholar
Newton, Thomas, ed. Paradise Lost. By John Milton. London, 1749.Google Scholar
Pasco, Allan. Allusion: A Literary Graft. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1994.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Perri, Carmela. “On Alluding.” Poetics 7 (1978): 289–307.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pope, Alexander. An Essay on Criticism. Poetry and Prose of Alexander Pope. Ed. Williams, Aubrey. New York: Houghton, 1969. 37–57.Google Scholar
Pope, Alexander. The Rape of the Lock. Poetry and Prose of Alexander Pope. Ed. Williams, Aubrey. New York: Houghton, 1969. 78–100.Google Scholar
Porter, William. Reading the Classics and Paradise Lost. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1993.Google Scholar
Prescott, Anne Lake. “Intertextual Topology: English Writers and Pantagruel's Hell.” English Literary Renaissance 23 (1993): 244–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Richards, I. A. The Philosophy of Rhetoric. New York: Oxford UP, 1936.Google Scholar
Ricks, Christopher. Allusion to the Poets. New York: Oxford UP, 2002.Google Scholar
Smith, Barbara Herrnstein. “Contingencies of Value.” Critical Inquiry 10 (1983): 5–39.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smith, Charlotte. “To the Shade of Burn.” The Poems of Charlotte Smith. Ed. Curran, Stuart. New York: Oxford UP, 1993. 71.Google Scholar
Stein, Edwin. Wordsworth's Art of Allusion. University Park: Pennsylvania State UP, 1988.Google Scholar
Teskey, Gordon. Delirious Milton: The Fate of the Poet in Modernity. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2006.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wordsworth, William. “The World Is Too Much with Us.” William Wordsworth. Ed. Gill, Stephen. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1984. 270.Google Scholar
“World.” The Oxford English Dictionary. 2nd ed. 1989.Google Scholar