Refashioning Allegorical Imagery: From Langland to Spenser

Scholars often frame allegory as if it were tied to stable signifiers (i.e. white as purity) and therefore insulated from material concerns. I argue, however, that allegorical clothing is always-already material. That is, it is necessarily tied to material concerns either with respect to fashion or status, and therefore all allegorical costume should be seen as a comment on contemporary material culture. In order to make this argument, this dissertation tracks allegorical costume in English poetry from Langland to Spenser. Starting in the 14th century, there was a rapid expansion of access to and variety in fashion, and there was an increased awareness that identity could be donned and therefore bought and sold. This troubled contemporary moralists, who struggled to define how clothing worked in the public sphere, and it troubled allegorical poets, who struggled to apply stable literary markers in a shifting discursive field. Because allegory is only able to signify through a shared contemporary discourse, I thus argue that fashion both disrupted the discursive field around dress and destabilized allegorical imagery. Chapter 1 examines William Langland’s Piers Plowman and The Book of Margery Kempe to see how allegorical conventions conflict with the way characters read each other’s clothing, and how the access to power and institutional backing allows certain characters to define how their clothing is read. Chapter 2 explores the rise of the morality play by perusing The Castle of Perseverance, Mankind, and Hyckescorner. While, morality plays are often assumed to be heavy handed lectures that impose categorical imperatives on their audience members, this chapter shows that English morality plays are inescapably material. Even though their structure remains consistent, their descriptions and staging of righteousness shifts along with East Anglian politics. Chapter 3 compares Skelton’s Bowge of Court to his one surviving morality play, Magnyfycence. While both are courtly, dramatic allegories, they establish different rules under which clothing can signify and include different individuals into those systems. Chapter 4 analyzes Britomart in Spenser’s Faerie Queene in order to show how the transformative potential of Britomart’s armor shifts with Spenser’s waning enthusiasm for Elizabeth I. This dissertation contends that material valences of allegorical imagery contend with and sometimes overwhelm classical models or literary convention, and that struggle within the mode demonstrates profound continuity between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.