Toward a Benjaminian Theory of Dialectial Allegory
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4270705 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Matthew Wilkens (0000-0001-6749-9318, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2006 |
| Volume | 37 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 285-298 |
| Publication date | 2006-03-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | New Literary History (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0028-6087 • E-ISSN: 1080-661X |
| Publisher | Project MUSE (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1353/nlh.2006.0041 |
| OpenAlex | W2025590087 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 2 |
| References cited | 9 |
Despite Benjamin's importance to contemporary allegory studies, his understanding of allegory has been widely misconstrued in ways that diminish its applicability to current problems in the field. I attribute this in large part to a failure to integrate his early writings on the subject in The Origin of German Tragic Drama with his later views, expressed in both his writings on Baudelaire and the recently-translated Arcades Project. An examination of this last text in light of the others yields a theory of allegory as a dialectical mode that responds to the destabilization of, or contradiction within, the historically-specific situation from which it emerges. This in turn accounts for the apparent contradictions between Benjamin's several treatments of the topic, each of which considers a unique moment of cultural production
Allegory · Art · Contradiction · Dialectic · Drama · Epistemology · Field (mathematics) · German · Linguistics · Literature · Phrase · Subject (documents) · French Literature and Poetry · Philosophy · Visual Culture and Art Theory · Walter Benjamin Studies Compilation
| Unique citing works | 2 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,11 |
| Citation span | 2008 - 2017 (10) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |