Postmodern allegory is horizontal and relational rather than vertical and fixed

Evidence

For the newer allegory is horizontal rather than vertical: if it must still attach its one-on-one conceptual labels to its objects after the fashion of The Pilgrim’s Progress, it does so in the conviction that those objects (along with their labels) are now profoundly relational, indeed are themselves constructed by their relations to each other. … When we add to this the inevitable mobility of such relations, we begin to glimpse the process of allegorical interpretation as a kind of scanning that, moving back and forth across the text, readjusts its terms in constant modification of a type quite different from our stereotypes of some static medieval or biblical decoding, and which one would be tempted (were it not also an old-fashioned word!) to characterize as dialectical. — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 392

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the newer allegory against the older vertical decoding of Pilgrim’s Progress.
• XREF: connects to: Allegory loses its melancholy character when viewed from a redemptive standpoint — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism: A Marxist…, 637; Frye extends meaning beyond the anagogic allegorical coding of humanity — Fredric Jameson, The Political Unconscious, 1704; Postmodernism’s rejection of unified representation leads logically to pragmatic localism. — David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity: An…, 353 (+2 more)