How do enigmas and riddles work in literature? This benchmark study investigates the literary trope of the riddle, and its relation to the broader term “enigma,” including enigma as large masterplot. Cook argues for a revival of the old figure of speech known as “enigma” from Aristotle to the seventeenth century by demonstrating its usefulness. The opening chapter surveys “enigma personified” as sphinx and griffin, resuscitating a lost Graeco-Latin pun on “griffin” used by Lewis Carroll. The history and functions of enigma draw on classical and biblical through to modern writing. Wide-ranging examples concentrate on literature in English, especially modern poetry, with three detailed case studies on Dante, Lewis Carroll, and Wallace Stevens. An important contribution to studies of poetic thought and metaphor, this anatomy of the riddle will appeal particularly to readers and scholars of poetry, modern American and comparative literatures, rhetoric, and folk-riddles.
ELEANOR COOK is Professor Emerita, Department of English, University of Toronto. She writes mainly on poetry and poetics, especially modern, as well as on questions of allusion, the English Bible and literature, and the riddle. Her books include studies of Robert Browning and Wallace Stevens, as well as a collection of essays, Against Coercion: Games Poets Play (1998). Her essays have appeared in many books and journals, including American Literature, Daedalus, ELH, Essays in Criticism, and Philosophy and Literature. She has served as President of the Association of Literary Scholars and Critics, and is a Guggenheim Fellow, a Senior Killam Research Fellow (Canada Council), and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.
ELEANOR COOK
CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
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© Eleanor Cook 2006
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ISBN-10 0-521-85510-1 paperback
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For Jay and Peggy
riddle-masters both
and for Graeme
who knows the mysteries of birds
| List of illustrations | page ix | |
| Preface | xi | |
| Acknowledgments | xvi | |
| A note on the references | xviii | |
| List of abbreviations | xix | |
| Introduction | 1 | |
| 1 | Enigma personified: the riddling beasts, sphinx and griffin | 7 |
| 2 | Enigma as trope: history, function, fortunes | 27 |
| 3 | What is the shape of the riddle? Enigma as masterplot | 64 |
| 4 | Case study I. Enigma in Dante's Eden (Purgatorio 27–33) | 92 |
| 5 | Questions of riddle and genre | 110 |
| 6 | Riddle as Scheme: a case for a new griph-class | 139 |
| 7 | Case study II. Mapping riddles: Lewis Carroll and the Alice books | 160 |
| 8 | Figures for enigma | 181 |
| 9 | Case study III. The structure of reality: enigma in Wallace Stevens's later work | 210 |
| 10 | From protection to innocent amusement: some other functions of enigma | 226 |
| Afterword: enigma, the boundary figure | 244 | |
| Appendix: Enigma, riddle, and friends among the lexicographers | 257 | |
| Select bibliography | 266 | |
| Index | 287 | |
| 1. | “Oedipe et le sphinx” (Vatican, Museo Gregoriano), from Dictionnaire des antiquités grecques et romaines (1877). Courtesy of the Robarts Library, University of Toronto | page 10 |
| 2. | Frontispiece from Athanasius Kircher, Oedipus Aegyptiacus (Rome, 1652). By permission of the Houghton Library, Harvard University | 11 |
| 3. | Gold-guarding golden griffins, Toronto heritage building, 320 Bay Street, originally built for the Canada Permanent Trust, 1928–30. Photograph by Markham Cook | 21 |
| 4. | Title-page, Claude-François Ménestrier, La Philosophie des images énigmatiques (1694). Courtesy of the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, University of Toronto | 133 |
| 5. | Lewis Carroll's drawing of the Gryphon and the Mock Turtle, Alice's Adventures under Ground (London, 1886). Courtesy of the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library (Brabant Carroll Collection), University of Toronto | 164 |
| 6. | John Tenniel's drawing of the sleeping Gryphon, Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Courtesy of the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library (Brabant Carroll Collection), University of Toronto | 165 |
| 7. | Labyrinth design, Lucca, from John Ruskin, Works, vol. xxvii, p. 401. Courtesy of the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, University of Toronto | 194 |
| 8. | Pilgrim in a labyrinth, from Herman Hugo, Pia Desideria (1632 edn.), p. 148. Courtesy of the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, University of Toronto | 197 |
| 9. | Frontispiece titled “The Solution of a Riddle” from Peter Puzzlewell, A Choice Collection of Riddles, Charades, Rebusses, &c. (London, 1792). By permission of the Houghton Library, Harvard University | 237 |