ABSTRACT

This conclusion presents some closing thoughts on the key concepts discussed in the preceding chapters of this book. The book shows allegory crossings in Renaissance English literature can betoken a gradual movement at once toward and away from what one most seeks to recover and especially, allegory. It discusses the chiastic understanding of faith coupled with deeds does not end in circular regression though, because the resulting action ultimately points outward, into the social world and with an end toward the advancement of the culture made possible as a result. The social energies and cultural endeavors considered here are not exhausted in their use of the particular modes and forms of literary action. Classical notions of mnemonic invention were revived during the English Renaissance and could be used to push the limits of its traditional rhetorical ends and conventional mythopoetic means toward developing a way of construing man's place in the world predicated-paradoxically and chiastically-on recovery as loss.