TY - BOOK ID - 2010237 TI - The poetics of personification PY - 1994 VL - 6 SN - 0521445396 9780521106313 9780521106313 9780511552830 9780521445399 0521106311 0511552831 PB - Cambridge Cambridge University press DB - UniCat KW - Literary semiotics KW - Poetics KW - Personification in literature KW - Literature, Medieval KW - Rhetoric, Medieval KW - Allegory KW - History KW - History and criticism KW - Allegory. KW - Personification in literature. KW - Rhetoric, Medieval. KW - History and criticism. KW - 82-3 KW - -Rhetoric, Medieval KW - -Poetry KW - Symbolism in literature KW - European literature KW - Medieval literature KW - Pathetic fallacy KW - Proza. Fictie. Narratologie KW - -Technique KW - -Proza. Fictie. Narratologie KW - -82-3 KW - 82-3 Proza. Fictie. Narratologie KW - -Pathetic fallacy KW - Poetry KW - 82-3 Fiction. Prose narrative KW - Fiction. Prose narrative KW - Arts and Humanities KW - Literature KW - Poetics - History - To 1500 KW - Literature, Medieval - History and criticism UR - https://www.unicat.be/uniCat?func=search&query=sysid:2010237 AB - Literary personification has long been taken for granted as an important aspect of Western narrative; Paul de Man has given it still greater prominence as 'the master trope of poetic discourse'. James Paxson here offers a much-needed critical and theoretical appraisal of personification in the light of poststructuralist thought and theory. The poetics of personification provides a historical reassessment of early theories, together with a sustained account of how literary personification works through an examination of narratological and semiotic codes and structures in the allegorical texts of Prudentius, Chaucer, Langland and Spenser. The device turns out to be anything but an aberration, oddity or barbarism, from ancient, medieval or early modern literature. Rather, it works as a complex artistic tool for revealing and advertising the problems and limits inherent in narration in particular and poetic or verbal creation in general. ER -