Jacobin Allegory in Thelwall's The Rock of Modrec

Abstract

This essay seeks to show that The Rock of Modrec occupies an important place in Thelwall's oeuvre and in the early development of Jacobin ‘seditious allegory’. While scholarship has thus far ignored The Rock of Modrec on account of its apparent juvenilia and ostensible apoliticism, I argue that Thelwall's chivalric romance allegorizes the British spirit as a champion of liberty and universal emancipation, and that it does so for a popular audience. Furthermore, its protagonist serves as a model for Jacobin allegorical reading practices: Sir Eltram begins as a passive receiver of ‘politico-sentimental’ appeals but eventually becomes an active allegorical interpreter, capable of reading into texts the universal truth of democratic liberty for which the British Jacobins strove. The Rock of Modrec thus serves as both an early example of Thelwall's use of ‘seditious allegory’ and a meta-textual commentary on the importance of allegorical reading as Jacobin radical praxis.