By mapping the contour of Thornton Wilder's major plays and novels this book offers a fresh
reading of his deceptively unfashionable art of allegorical narrative and aims to reaffirm
Malcolm Cowley's perspicacious judgment: (Wilder is) one of the toughest and most complicated
minds in contemporary America. After a review of the history and scholarship of allegory the
author chronologically traces Wilder's extensive complex and resilient engagement with
allegory a genre employed not only for literary manifestation but for philosophical inquiry.
Moving expertly from Wilder's early religious playlets through his Pulitzerwinning fictions and
plays to his largely obscure late writings this study reveals that allegory and Wilder studies
are two mutually illuminating topics. What distinguishes Wilder from other modern allegorists
is not only his self-reflexive shuttling between the novel and the drama but his tenacious
persistence on pressing for the sublime universality of our mundane experiences in a postsacral
world. Overturning the common characterization of Wilder as a preachy voice of Puritan
religiosity this book argues for the centrality of ambiguity that produces nuanced meanings in
Wilder's allegorical narratives.
