Allegories of Error in Samuel Richardson's Clarissa.

ABSTRACT Drawing on Renaissance romances from Ludovico Ariosto's Orlando Furioso to Spenser's Faerie Qveene, the major characters of Samuel Richardson's Clarissa use allegory to frame their lives according to spiritual and metaphysical narratives. While Lovelace recycles Renaissance rape narratives to justify his abuse of Clarissa, Clarissa herself alludes to the Bible and The Faerie Qveene to move from the errors of temporal life to the spiritual wholeness of eternity. Clarissa subsumes Lovelace into her allegory of Christian repentance. She weaves into her epistolary narrative the "pilgrim allegory" of the English Puritans, which shows how error can be used to sanctify the Christian's soul. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]