497 - Perspectives In Literary Symbolism

Perspectives In Literary Symbolism
Edited by Joseph Strelka
257 pp. University Park and London, Pennsylvania State University Press, 1968. $8.75.

Theologians can profit primarily from two essays in this anthology, though the anthology as a whole is not directed to them, but rather to literary critics, and especially to those who are interested in the field of comparative criticism.

Philip Wheelwright's "The Archetypal Symbol" is one of the clearest and most cogent brief analyses of symbols and archetypes which I know, and I recommend it without reservation. A careful study of this chapter will reward biblical scholars with a set of immensely useful and relevant terms, and prepare them to apply this terminology without the fuzziness so often found in such efforts. Wheelwright's analysis goes beyond the particularity and idiosyncrasy of any one school of criticism, and so allows a wide adaption.

Another essay provides a very different kind of insight. Kenneth Burke, in "Words Anent Logology," provides a specialized approach to Paradise Lost (and thus to Genesis as well) in the Burkean mode and terminology. Though Burke's chapter is more restricted in usefulness than is Wheelwright's, it is also highly stimulating. A case in point is Burke's analysis of Arianism as a temporalizing of essence, "since it treats the Son as coming after the Father." Equally interesting is his

498 - Perspectives In Literary Symbolism

discussion of how and why in Genesis and in Milton "the principle of guilt is intrinsic to the nature of Order," an analysis which is a major contribution of the essay.

Others among the twelve essayists who contributed to this volume will appeal to various literary specialists, but for those who are concerned professionally with the biblical literature, Wheelwright and Burke will be most helpful.

Roland Mushat Frye
The University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania