Varieties of Parable

1965

Brasch PN56 A5 M466

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

When Louis MacNeice delivered the Clark lectures at Cambridge in 1963, he discussed the nature of parable in both his own poetry and a wide range of literary texts, from Spenser’s Faerie Queene to Beckett’s Waiting for Godot. Attracted to such ‘double-level writing,’ MacNeice believed that ‘The best [works] are written on two or more planes at once.’ In such writing, the author creates an enigmatic narrative world which has a meaningful relationship to our real world.