Abstract: Allegoresis and close stylistic analysis can seem, at first blush, to be strange methodological bedfellows, yet Jameson yokes these two modes of reading together at numerous points in his work. This talk will explore the unusual linkage of these modes in Jameson with an eye towards explaining why it is both central to his dialectical mode and to his sense of what he refers to as the essential “expansiveness” of allegory.
Ethan Knapp is Associate Professor of English at Ohio State University. He has published widely in the field of medieval literature, including Thomas Hoccleve and the Literature of Late Medieval England and edited collections on The Art of Vision: Ekphrasis in Medieval Literature and Culture and The Marxist Premodern. In the world of theory, he has published essays on Walter Benjamin, Fredric Jameson, and the theory of allegory. At Ohio State University Press, he serves as the general editor for the series Interventions: New Studies in Medieval Literature. He is currently working on a new book on the medieval poet, John Gower.