Representation of a thing or abstraction as a person
This article is about the representation of a thing or abstraction as a person. For the attribution of human traits, emotions, or intentions to non-human entities, seeAnthropomorphism. For the album, seePersonification (album).
In manypolytheistic early religions,deities had a strong element of personification, suggested by descriptions such as "god of". Inancient Greek religion, and the relatedancient Roman religion, this was perhaps especially strong, in particular among the minor deities.[6] Many such deities, such as thetyches ortutelary deities for major cities, survived the arrival ofChristianity, now as symbolic personifications stripped of religious significance. An exception was the winged goddess of victory,Victoria/Nike, who developed into thevisualisation of the Christian angel.[7]
Generally, personifications lack much in the way of narrativemyths, althoughclassical myth at least gave many of them parents among themajor Olympian deities.[8] Theiconography of several personifications "maintained a remarkable degree of continuity from late antiquity until the 18th century".[9] Female personifications tend to outnumber male ones,[10] at least until modernnational personifications, many of which are male.
Personifications are very common elements inallegory, and historians and theorists of personification complain that the two have been too often confused, or discussion of them dominated by allegory. Single images of personifications tend to be titled as an "allegory", arguably incorrectly.[11] By the late 20th century personification seemed largely out of fashion, but the semi-personificatorysuperhero figures of manycomic book series came in the 21st century to dominate popular cinema in a number ofsuperhero film franchises.
According toErnst Gombrich, "we tend to take it for granted rather than to ask questions about this extraordinary predominantly feminine population which greets us from the porches of cathedrals, crowds around our public monuments, marks our coins and our banknotes, and turns up in our cartoons and our posters; these females variously attired, of course, came to life on the medieval stage, they greeted the Prince on his entry into a city, they were invoked in innumerable speeches, they quarreled or embraced in endless epics where they struggled for the soul of the hero or set the action going, and when the medieval versifier went out on one fine spring morning and lay down on a grassy bank, one of these ladies rarely failed to appear to him in his sleep and to explain her own nature to him in any number of lines".[12]
Constance andFortitude inVienna. Early modern statues with classicaliconography.
Personification as an artistic device is easier to discuss when belief in the personification as an actual spiritual being has died down;[13] this seems to have happened in the ancient Graeco-Roman world, probably even beforeChristianisation.[14] In other cultures, especiallyHinduism andBuddhism, many personification figures still retain their religious significance, which is why they are not covered here. For example,Bharat Mata was devised as a Hindu goddess figure to act as a national personification by intellectuals in theIndian independence movement from the 1870s, but now has some actualHindu temples.[15]
Personification is found very widely in classical literature, art and drama, as well as the treatment of personifications as relatively minor deities, or the rather variable category ofdaemons.[16] In classical Athens, every geographical division of the state for local government purposes had a personified deity which received some cultic attention, as well asDemos, a male personification for the governing assembly of free citizens, andBoule, a female one for the ruling council. These appear in art but are often hard to identify if not labelled.[17]
Personification in the Bible is mostly limited to passing phrases which can probably be regarded as literary flourishes,[18] with the important and much-discussed exception ofWisdom in theBook of Proverbs, 1–9, where a female personification is treated at some length, and makes speeches.[19] TheFour Horsemen of the Apocalypse from theBook of Revelation can be regarded as personification figures, although the text does not specify what all personify.[20]
According to James J. Paxson in his book on the subject "all personification figures prior to the sixth century A.D. were ... female";[21] but major rivers have male personifications much earlier, and are more often male, which often extends to "Water" in theFour Elements.[22] The predominance of females is at least partly becauseLatin grammar gives nouns for abstractions the female gender.[23]
Pairs ofwinged victories decorated thespandrels of Romantriumphal arches and similar spaces, andancient Roman coinage was an especially rich source of images, many carrying their name, which was helpful for medieval and Renaissance antiquarians. Sets of tyches representing the major cities of the empire were used in thedecorative arts.[24] Most imaginable virtues and virtually everyRoman province was personified on coins at some point, the provinces often initially seated dejected as "CAPTA" ("taken") after its conquest, and later standing, creating images such asBritannia that were often revived in the Renaissance or later.[25]
Lucian (2nd century AD) records a detailed description of a lost painting byApelles (4th century BC) called theCalumny of Apelles, which some Renaissance painters followed,most famously Botticelli. This included eight personifications of virtues and vices: Hope, Repentance, Perfidy, Calumny, Fraud, Rancour, Ignorance, Suspicion, as well as two other figures.[26]
According to Andrew Escobedo, "literary personification marshalls inanimate things, such as passions, abstract ideas, and rivers, and makes them perform actions in the landscape of the narrative."[28] He dates "the rise and fall of its [personification's] literary popularity" to "roughly, between the fifth and seventeenth centuries".[29] Late antique philosophical books that made heavy use of personification and were especially influential in theMiddle Ages included thePsychomachia ofPrudentius (early 5th century), with an elaborate plot centered around battles between the virtues and vices,[30] andThe Consolation of Philosophy (c. 524) byBoethius, which takes the form of a dialogue between the author and "Lady Philosophy".Fortuna and theWheel of Fortune were prominent and memorable in this, which helped to make the latter a favourite medieval trope.[31] Both authors were Christians, and the origins in the pagan classical religions of the standard range of personifications had been left well behind.
InItalian literaturePetrach'sTriomphi, finished in 1374, is based around a procession of personifications carried on "cars", as was becoming fashionable in courtly festivities; it was illustrated by many different artists.[34]Dante has several personification characters, but prefers using real persons to represent most sins and virtues.[35]
InElizabethan literature many of the characters inEdmund Spenser's enormous epicThe Faerie Queene, though given different names, are effectively personifications, especially of virtues.[36]The Pilgrim's Progress (1678) byJohn Bunyan was the last great personification allegory in English literature, from a strongly Protestant position (though see Thomson'sLiberty below). A work likeShelley'sThe Triumph of Life, unfinished at his death in 1822, which to many earlier writers would have called for personifications to be included, avoids them, as does most Romantic literature,[37] apart from that ofWilliam Blake.[38] Leading critics had begun to complain about personification in the 18th century, and such "complaints only grow louder in the nineteenth century".[39] According to Andrew Escobedo, there is now "an unstated scholarly consensus" that "personification is a kind of frozen or hollow version of literal characters", which "depletes the fiction".[40]
When not illustrating literary texts, or following a classical model as Botticelli does, personifications in art tend to be relatively static, and found together in sets, whether of statues decorating buildings or paintings, prints or media such as porcelain figures. Sometimes one or more virtues take on and invariably conquer vices. Other paintings by Botticelli are exceptions to such simple compositions, in particular hisPrimavera andThe Birth of Venus, in both of which several figures form complex allegories.[46] An unusually powerful single personification figure is depicted inMelencolia I (1514) anengraving byAlbrecht Dürer.[47]Venus, Cupid, Folly and Time (c. 1545) byAgnolo Bronzino has five personifications, apart from Venus and Cupid.[48] In all these cases, the meaning of the work remains uncertain, despite intensive academic discussion, and even the identity of the figures continues to be argued over.[49]
Ariel between Wisdom and Gaiety with the Latin inscriptionobsculta, a word that doesn't mean just 'listen', but also 'obey' byEric Gill,Broadcasting House, 1932.
Around 300 BC,Demetrius of Phalerum is the first writer onrhetoric to describe prosopopoeia, which was already a well-established device in rhetoric and literature, fromHomer onwards.[50]Quintilian's lengthyInstitutio Oratoria gives a comprehensive account, and ataxonomy of common personifications; no more comprehensive account was written until after the Renaissance.[51] The mainRenaissance humanists to deal with the subject at length wereErasmus in hisDe copia andPetrus Mosellanus inTabulae de schematibus et tropis, who were copied by other writers throughout the 16th century.[52]
From the late 16th century theoretical writers such asKarel van Mander in hisSchilder-boeck (1604) began to treat personification in terms of thevisual arts. At the same time theemblem book, describing and illustrating emblematic images that were largely personifications, became enormously popular, both with intellectuals and artists and craftsmen looking for motifs.[53] The most famous of these was theIconologia ofCesare Ripa, first published unillustrated in 1593, but from 1603 published in many different illustrated editions, using different artists. This set at least the identifying attributes carried by many personifications until the 19th century.[54]
From the 20th century into the 21st, the past use of personification has received greatly increased critical attention, just as the artistic practice of it has greatly declined. Among a number of key works,The Allegory of Love: A Study in Medieval Tradition (1936), byC. S. Lewis was an exploration ofcourtly love in medieval and Renaissance literature.[55]
The classical repertoire of virtues, seasons, cities and so forth supplied the majority of subjects until the 19th century, but some new personifications became required. The 16th century saw the newpersonification of the Americas and made thefour continents an appealing new set, four figures being better suited to many contexts than three. The 18th-century discovery of Australia was not so quickly followed by an addition to the set, if only for reasons of geometry; Australia is not included in the continents at the corners of theAlbert Memorial (1860s). This does have a set of three-figure groups representingagriculture,commerce,engineering andmanufacturing, typical of the requirements for large public schemes of the period.[56] A rather late example is theAlexander Hamilton U.S. Custom House in New York City (1901–07), which has large groups for the four continents by the entrance, and 12 figures personifying seafaring nations from history high on the facade.
The invention ofmovable type printing sawDame Imprimerie ("Lady Printing Press") introduced to the pageants ofLyon, a major printing center, along with "Typosine", a new muse of printing.[57] A large gilt-bronze statue byEvelyn Beatrice Longman, something of a specialist in "allegorical" statues, was commissioned byAT&T for the top of their New York headquarters. Since 1916 it has been titled at different times as theGenius of Telegraphy,Genius of Electricity, and since the 1930sSpirit of Communication. Shakespeare's spiritAriel was adopted by the sculptorEric Gill as a personification of broadcasting, and features in his sculptures onBroadcasting House in London (opened 1932).[58] A more modern approach on the personification is, “Plantification” a form of comparing things to plants.
A number of national personifications stick to the old formulas, with a female in classical dress, carrying attributes suggesting power, wealth, or other virtues.[59]
Libertas, the Roman goddess ofliberty, had been important under theRoman Republic, and was somewhat uncomfortably co-opted by theRoman Empire;[60] it was not seen as an innate right, but as granted to some under Roman law.[61] She had appeared on the coins of the assassins ofJulius Caesar, defenders of theRoman Republic. The medieval republics, mostly in Italy, greatly valued their liberty, and often use the word, but produce very few direct personifications. With the rise ofnationalism and new states, many nationalist personifications included a strong element of liberty, perhaps culminating in theStatue of Liberty (Liberty Enlightening the World). The long poemLiberty by the ScottishJames Thomson (1734), is a lengthymonologue spoken by the "Goddess of Liberty", describing her travels through the ancient world, and then English and British history, before the resolution of theGlorious Revolution of 1688 confirms her position there.[62] Thomson also wrote the lyrics forRule Britannia, and the two personifications were often combined as a personified "British Liberty",[63] to whom a large monument was erected in the 1750s on his estate atGibside bya Whig magnate.[64]
^"All the commonplace figures of poetry, tropes, allegories, personifications, with the whole heathen mythology, were instantly discarded" according toWilliam Hazlitt in "On the Living Poets" inLectures on the English Poets, 1818
^Escobedo, Ch. 1. He does not share this view. In particular, personifications mostly remain tied to a single character trait, that of embodying their quality.
^These were all given consideration at the highest levels. The designs for the continents had "changes [which] may (although there is no evidence of it) reflect the promptings of 'statesmanlike' discretion. Participation in the guidance of America's progress was relinquished by the figure of Canada and it was left wholly to the United States. In the group of Europe, the link of olive leaves between France and England was dropped, as was the gesture indicating England's reception of the Bible of the Reformation from Germany, and each of the national figures was more isolated. In 'Africa', Egypt, instead of listening to the counsels of Britain, herself instructed Nubia."'Albert Memorial: The memorial'Archived 2014-11-04 at theWayback Machine,Survey of London: volume 38: South Kensington Museums Area (1975), 159–176. Accessed: 22 May 2019
Escobedo, Andrew,Volition's Face: Personification and the Will in Renaissance Literature, 2017, University of Notre Dame Press,ISBN0268101698, 9780268101695,google books
Gombrich, Ernst, "Personification", in R. R. Bolgar (ed.),Classical Influences in European Culture AD 500–1500, 1971, Cambridge UP,PDF
Hall, James,Hall's Dictionary of Subjects and Symbols in Art, 1996 (2nd edn.), John Murray,ISBN0719541476
Heuer, Jennifer, "Gender and Nationalism" inNations and Nationalism: A Global Historical Overview, Eds Guntram H. Herb, David H. Kaplan, 2008, ABC-CLIO,ISBN1851099085, 9781851099085,google books
Higham, John (1990). "Indian Princess and Roman Goddess: The First Female Symbols of America",Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society. 100: 50–51, JSTOR orPDF
Melion, Walter, Remakers, Bart,Personification: Embodying Meaning and Emotion, 2016, BRILL,ISBN9004310436, 9789004310438,google books
Paxson, James J.,The Poetics of Personification, 1994, Cambridge University Press,ISBN0521445396, 9780521445399,google books
Sear, David,Roman Coins and Their Values, Volume 2, 46–48, 49–51, 2002, Spink & Son, Ltd,ISBN1912667231, 9781912667239,google books
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