Allegory and Personification

Abstract

Allegory needs narrative, and narrative needs agents. But allegorical narratives put pressure on agents by asking them both to act and to signify. From the battling virtues of Prudentius’ Psychomachia to the saints of medieval hagiography, allegorical agents participate both in a narrative world and in orders and identities beyond that narrative world. As persons, these agents are marked by dynamism and freedom, but as signifiers, they tend towards emblematic stillness, often towards immateriality. In this chapter, I consider an exemplary sort of allegorical agent: the personification. I consider the problems that personifications tend to raise and the contexts in which they might make sense as representations of human life. And I consider some of the theological paradigms and narrative structures within which personification develops: incarnation (word becomes body), transfiguration (body becomes a sign of the word), and desire (body strives towards its other).