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• W305214556 abstract "James J. Paxson. The Poetics of Personification. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994. xii + 210 pp. $49.95 cloth. Figures disfigure. From one perspective, this is truism of style coterminous with Western thought itself. That, of course, is notion from within which style is understood as deviation from or, less forebodingly, as variation on, some norm or standard of writing defined by convention or usage (in twentieth century, one critic closely associated with this perspective is Leo Spitzer). Personification, in this view, is gross disfigurement since in animating inanimate or one-dimensionalizing animate, blatantly violates normal and normative. One great merit, for me perhaps greatest merit, of James Paxson's book is its clear demonstration that this definition as formulated is hardly complete or sufficient for understanding extraordinary of personification, above all that speaks other (alieniloquium is common synonym in medieval rhetoric for allegory). Paxson conducts his argument through preface, an introduction, six chapters, and conclusion. Some dozen pages of notes, four of works cited, and an index complete his book. Throughout he demonstrates an exhilarating rigor of argumentation based on breadth of reading that I find rare in current theoretical writing. He may be accused by some of using jargon: this is regrettable because he can hardly avoid dense technical vocabulary his subject has generated over centuries. I would like in this review, insofar as I can, exonerate him of charge, though. His language is indeed constrained by his subject and, if anything, I think it is his credit that he can argue as clearly and forcefully as he does in field so dense with conceptual and verbal obstacles and tangles. In his introduction, Paxson defines his aim: to extend and enrich current theoretical rehabilitation of personification (1). In chapter 1, he isolates theoretical problem in terms of an historical survey of ideas about personification (2), starting with Aristotle and classical rhetoricians and concluding with twentieth-century theorists. Chapter 2 reassesses conventional terminology associated with personification (3). Noting that the subject cries out for rigorous taxonomy, Paxson insists, rightly, that the speaking aspect of prosopopoeia is essential in describing character's essential status (3). Proceeding chapter 3, Paxson analyzes Prudentius's Psychomachia, necessary consider for anyone studying personification, and he focuses on a narratological program analyzing 'layers' or levels of diegesis in Prudentius' (3). He then moves in chapter 4 the sketch of phenomenological model that explains textual 'generation' of figures (4). In this, densest and most rewarding chapter of his book, he argues that personificational thinking in medieval literature presages modern philosophical or critical phenomenology (4). With phenomenological model in place, he turns Piers Plowman in chapter 5 so as analyze code that programs means by which Langland's narrator, Will, recognizes, names, and interacts with various personification. figures (4). Chapter 6 then brings Paxson what tradition has undoubtedly cast as grandest of narratives in English letters--The Faerie Queene (4). Spenser, he argues, self-consciously plays with and foregrounds features of understood as an artificial, complex, literary trope (4); Spenser's text narrates literalized moment of 'making' or 'unmaking' of figure (5). In his conclusion, Paxson attempts to show how and why use of figuration by Prudentius, Chaucer, Langland, and Spenser might well operate as basis of narrative allegory (5). Paxson's own description of his argument and procedure, which I have tried let speak for itself here, suggests range of information and insight that his study surveys and supports. …" @default.
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• W305214556 date "1995-04-01" @default.
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• W305214556 title "Book Reviews -- the Poetics of Personification by James J. Paxson" @default.
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