What is an allusion?

Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism

Volumn 59, Issue 3, 2001, Pages 287-297

  Irwin, William ^a  

^a KING'S COLLEGE   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 0141513468     PISSN: 00218529     EISSN: 15406245     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/1540-6245.00026     Document Type: Review

References (39)

1. I wish to thank King's College for supporting this research with a generous summer grant. I also wish to thank Gregory Bassham, Megan Lloyd, Jorge J. E. Gracia, and an anonymous reviewer from The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism for insightful comments and criticisms on earlier drafts of this article. An earlier version of this work was presented at an Eastern Division Meeting of the American Society for Aesthetics and benefited from questions and discussion there. In this paper we shall consider only verbal allusions, although we shall draw on the work of theorists who have considered allusion more broadly, i.e., in the visual arts and music as well as in verbal form. Whether or not we can properly apply the concept of allusion outside the verbal realm is an issue we shall have to address elsewhere, although I suspect that given my definition we can
2. No books in English, that is. There is one notable book in Italian, Gian Biagio Conte, Memoria die poeti e sistema letterario: Catullo, Virgilio, Ovidio, Lucano (Turin: Einaudi, 1974)
3. For a review essay focusing on this book, see Anthony Johnson, "Allusion in Poetry," PTL 1 (1976): 579-587
4. There is also at least one notable article on the topic in Polish, Konrad Górski, "Aluzja literacka," Z historia i teorii literatury, II, Seria 2 (Warsaw: PWN, 1964), pp. 7-32
5. Nelson Goodman, Of Mind and Other Matters (Harvard University Press, 1984), pp. 65-66
6. Carmela Perri, "On Alluding," Poetics 7 (1978): 290
7. Michael Leddy, "The Limits of Allusion," The British Journal of Aesthetics 32 (1992): 112
8. For a related view given in terms of Grice's theory of conversational implicature, see James H. Coombs, "Allusion Defined and Explained," Poetics 13 (1984): 481
9. Perri makes a similar point in saying that beyond substitution of the referent, certain connotation is to be recognized; see "On Alluding," p. 292
10. At the very least an allusion requires what Ted Cohen calls the cultivation of intimacy. In the case of allusion, the intimacy is the realization through the association that the reader shares something in common with the author. Cf. Ted Cohen, Jokes: Philosophical Thoughts on Joking Matters (University of Chicago Press, 1999), pp. 28-29
11. M. H. Abrams, A Glossary of Literary Terms (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1971), p. 8
12. Cf. Leddy, "The Limits of Allusion," p. 110
13. Leddy, "The Limits of Allusion," p. 111
14. Cf. Coombs, "Allusion Defined and Explained," p. 476, on Wordsworth's The Prelude alluding to Milton's Paradise Lost
15. See Göran Hermerén, "Allusions and Intentions," in Gary Iseminger, ed., Intention and Interpretation (Temple University Press, 1992), p. 209
16. and Stephanie Ross, "Art and Allusion," The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 40 (1981): 60
17. See Hermerén, "Allusions and Intentions," p. 210, and Ross, "Art and Allusion," p. 62
18. Ross, "Art and Allusion," p. 62
19. For some discussion of unconscious intention and interpretation, see my Intentionalist Interpretation: A Philosophical Explanation and Defense (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1999), pp. 41-12 and 47-18
20. There has been no lengthy or substantive discussion of unconscious allusion, although Hermerén speaks as if it is, of course, possible in Influence in Art and Literature (Princeton University Press, 1975), p. 76
21. Ross also supports the possibility of unconscious allusion in "Art and Allusion," p. 64. Perri is against "unconscious echoes" acting as allusion markers; see "On Alluding," p. 300. It is not completely clear, though, whether she means that there cannot be unconscious echoes on the part of the audience or author. With her general sympathy for Freud, it would be surprising if she were to rule out the role of the authorial unconscious
22. E. D. Hirsch, Jr., Validity in Interpretation (Yale University Press, 1967), pp. 20-21
23. For more defense of unconscious intentions, see pp. 51-57 and 221-223. The persistent tendency to highlight the epistemological difficulties in discovering authorial intention is disappointing. For a nice correction of this tendency, cf. Peg Zeglin Brand and Myles Brand, "Surface Interpretation: A Reply to Leddy," The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 57 (1999): 463-165
24. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations (New York: Macmillan, 1968), pp. 243 ff
25. Note Wolfgang Iser, Prospecting: From Reader Response to Literary Anthropology (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989), pp. 3-30
26. Jokes frequently work in a similar way. Cf. Cohen, Jokes, p. 27
27. Susan Stewart, "The Pickpocket: A Study in Tradition and Allusion," MLN 95 (1980): 1133 and 1145
28. Iser, Prospecting, p. 29
29. Ziva Ben-Porat, "The Poetics of Literary Allusion," PTL 1 (1976): 127
30. Cf. Irwin, Intentionalist Interpretation, p. 54
31. John Campbell, "Allusions and Illusions," French Studies Bulletin 53 (1994): 19
32. Perri, "On Alluding," p. 292
33. Wolfgang Iser, The Implied Reader: Patterns of Prose Communication From Bunyan to Beckett (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974), p. 280
34. Kathleen A. Sherfick, "Eliot's The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, 83, I," The Explicator 46 (1987): 43
35. George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Metaphors We Live By (University of Chicago Press, 1980), p. 143
36. Cf. Ross, "Art and Allusion," p. 61. In accord with our own account we must recognize that the poet may have intended it in that way unconsciously despite his denial, or that he may be publicly denying his true intent although he himself knows what it is
37. See F. Cioffi, "Intention and Interpretation in Criticism," in Cyril Barrett, ed., Collected Papers on Aesthetics (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1966), pp. 172-173
38. Harold Bloom, The Anxiety of Influence (New York: Oxford University Press, 1973), p. 96
39. Stanley Rosen, "Horizontverschmelzung," in Lewis Edwin Hahn, ed., The Philosophy of Hans-Georg Gadamer (La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1997), p. 212