Table Of ContentStanford University Press, Stanford, California © 1992 by the Board of Trustees
of the Leland Stanford Junior University Printed in the United States of America
Published with the assistance of the Frederick W. Hilles Publications Fund at
Yale University
9780804780803
CIP data appear at the end of the book
For Jacques
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book has been so long in the writing that it has often seemed to me to
achieve its own version of the unending iterative cyclicality that I describe as
characteristic of epic figuration. Thanks are due, then, first to Thomas M.
Greene, Margaret K. Ferguson, Gordon Williams, and Lowry Nelson, Jr., who
read and commented on the dissertation from which my book eventually
emerged. Thomas Greene has read several later parts of the book with his usual
thoughtful care, and has given me valued advice and support throughout my
many rewritings. I’d like also to thank John Hollander for his crucial
interventions at several stages of revision, and for the encouragement he gave
me at the moments in which my epic task seemed insurmountable. I owe a
special debt to Harry Berger, Jr., and to the anonymous Classics readers for
Stanford University Press whose judicious suggestions about revisions gave the
book a new life. They pointed me to several scholarly works that helped me over
significant difficulties in my conceptualization. I also thank Helen Tartar, my
editor at Stanford Press, for her faith in the book when it most counted; Ellen F.
Smith, the project editor, for her help and patience; and Nancy Atkinson, for her
insightful copyediting.
My students at Yale—especially Bianca Calabresi, Rachel Eisler, and Sarah
Banks—will recognize their contribution to this work, especially in the Spenser
chapters. My research assistants each deserve special thanks. Sarah Mace
worked long and hard with the Iliad chapter, helping me to tighten the argument
and trying her best to dissuade me from my reading of the end of the poem. Her
intelligent criticism and assistance were invaluable. Nina Revoyr performed a
similar service for the rest of the manuscript, struggling at times with my prose
style, and questioning me insistently about the place of women (and the politics
of misogyny) in my argument. Bill Johnson-Gonzalez very kindly helped me
verify the accuracy of the Cervantes bibliography and notes. Ambreen Hai
worked long and patiently to produce the index.
My friends in the study group on ideology, resistance, and cultural form—
Helen Siu, James C. Scott, William Kelly, Deborah Davis-Friedmann, Jean-
Christophe Agnew, and Keith Luria—have all helped sharpen my understanding
of how everyday, often hidden or unacknowledged acts of resistance to cultural
domination can make possible a cultural or political criticism of surprising range
and power. Though they may not recognize their contributions here, our
concerns with what lived individual experience might tell us and with what the
individual might understand and value in larger ideological and political
struggles resurfaces in my treatment of the representation of action in the epic as
an aspect of these poems that deserves to be listened to in its own right.
I wish also to thank several other friends and colleagues who have contributed
to this project: Mark Rose and James Nohrnberg, who first taught me to read
Spenser; Ellen Peel, whose postcard with a bibliographical suggestion sent me in
several good directions; Michael Cadden, who provided essential assistance on a
moment’s notice—our many debates over the years have always kept me
rethinking questions that I believed I had answered; Jonathan Freedman, who
affectionately urged me to be more polemical; Alicia Fernández, whose
questioning of whether theories of ideology lead to social change helped me see
more clearly the challenge to heroic values that the epic can provide; Eugenia
DeLamotte and Shira Wolosky, whose friendship and example have taught me
much about what it means to be an intellectual; and Sheila Murnaghan and
Mihoko Suzuki, each of whom read drafts of the most recent version of this
book—their careful comments, and the special comradeship they offered, have
meant a great deal.
Acknowledging help and friendship has its own rhetorical form and generic
constraints, and it remains for me to reassure my readers that none of these
people is responsible for the errors in this book. While in this genre the name
may serve as a trope to invoke the full authority of the person cited, I must
demystify that trope in the moment of employing it—to some extent at least.
Many of my readers and assistants tried hard to argue me out of what they
viewed as interpretive errors that have nonetheless somehow found their way
back into the text. For the return of these suppressed or challenged readings, and
for any other errors, I must take full responsibility.
Finally, my parents and family have lived with this project for many years
with warmth and encouragement and only occasional moments of bafflement. I
owe them thanks for their support, emotional and otherwise—including the
providing of several lovely, cool places away from New Haven in which to
write. Finally, and most importantly, I thank my husband, Jacques Lezra, who
read each of the versions of the book, debated the theoretical questions they
raised, and encouraged me to believe that the project was worth doing. It is
simply true to say that without him this book would not exist.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Epigraph
INTRODUCTION: IDEOLOGY AND TROPE IN EPIC ARGUMENT
PART I - The Ancient Epic
Chapter One - THE POLITICS OF THE SIMILE I N THE ILIAD
Chapter Two - THE AENEID: THE POWER OF THE FIGURE
Chapter Three - THE FIGURATIVE ECONOMY OF THE AENEID
PART II - Versions of the Renaissance Epic
Chapter Four - THE EPISTEMOLOGIES OF ERRANTRY IN THE
FAERIE QUEENE
Chapter Five - THE POLITICS OF ALLEGORY IN THE FAERIE
QUEENE
Chapter Six - THE COMPULSION OF TROPE: TWO PARADIGMS
NOTES
WORKS CITED
INDEX OF CITATIONS
GENERAL INDEX
