It is very natural, then, that Dante should as the supreme poet of the middle ages furnish the supreme example of allegory. In the Convivio (c. 1306), Dante gives a very full and complete exposition of the proper method of interpreting a text. Any writing, he says, should be expounded in four senses. The first is the literal. The second is called the allegorical, and is the one that hides itself under the mantle of these tales, and is a truth hidden under beauteous fiction.[[328]] The reason this way of hiding was devised by wise men he promises to explain in the fourteenth treatise, which he never wrote. The third sense, he goes on to say, is the moral, as from the fact that Christ took with him but three disciples when he ascended the mountain for the transfiguration we may understand that in secret things we should have but few companions. The fourth sense is the analogical. Here the text may be literally true, but contain a spiritual significance beyond. That to Dante, however, all but the literal sense naturally coalesced as the allegorical is quite clear from the close of the chapter and from the letter to Can Grande, in which he discusses the interpretations of his Commedia. "Although these mystic senses are called by various names, they may all in general be called allegorical."[[329]] That the "beauteous fiction," the bella menzogna, of allegory is rhetorical in origin is clear from a passage in the Vita Nuova. Dante is defending his personification of Love as one walking, speaking and laughing on the assumption that as a poet he is licensed to use figures or rhetorical colorings. These colorings, however, must have a true but hidden significance. The rhetorical figures are a garment to clothe the nakedness of truth.[[330]]
2. Allegory in Mediaeval England
England as well as Italy furnished a congenial soil for allegory in the thirteenth century. In his Poetria, John of Garland[[331]] explains allegorically an "elegiac, bucolic, ethic, love poem" which he quotes. "Under the guise of the nymph," he says, "is figured forth the flesh; under that of the corrupt youth, the world or the devil; under that of the friend, reason."[[332]] In another illustrative poem, this time introduced to show the proper use of the six parts of an oration, John inserts between the "confirmacio," and the "confutacio," an "expositio mistica" in which the Trojan War is allegorized in this fashion: "The fury of Eacides is the ire of Satan," etc.[[333]]
As late as 1506 Stephen Hawes's Pastime of Pleasure is as mediaeval as the Romance of the Rose.[[334]] In this allegory of the education and love adventures of Grandamour the young man sits at the feet of Dame Rethoryke to be instructed at great length in her art. To none other of the seven liberal arts, in fact, does Hawes devote so much space. In the chapter on inventio, however, the lady seems to have forgotten all about her traditional past, for instead of discussing the method of finding all possible arguments in favor of a case, she discusses the poets, their purpose, and their fame.
The purpose of poetry is to her what it had been throughout the entire period of the middle ages. The poet presents truth under the guise of allegory.
To make of nought reason sentencious Clokynge a trouthe wyth colour tenebrous. For often under a fayre fayned fable A trouthe appereth gretely profitable.[[335]]
This, says Dame Rethoryke, has the sanction of antiquity; for the old poets, who are famous for their wisdom and the imaginative power of their invention, pronounced truth under cloudy figures. This fortified the poets against sloth.
The special treasure
Of new invencion, of ydleness the foo!
Then she addresses herself directly to the poets to laud their virtues.
Your hole desyre was set
Fables to fayne to eschewe ydleness,...
To dysnull vyce and the vycious to blame.