Brenda Machosky, an associate professor of English and humanities at the University of Hawaiʻi—West Oʻahu, recently published the book Structures of Appearing: Allegory and the Work of Literature with Fordham University Press.
Structures of Appearing addresses the limitations of a metaphysical, aesthetic approach to literature, an approach that effectively excludes allegory. By using a phenomenological approach, Machosky proposes a new understanding of allegory that is not about finding meaning but about experiencing language.
She recasts the historical relationship between art and philosophy, critiques aesthetics as an ideology that has long subjugated art to philosophical criteria of judgment, and revitalizes allegory as a fundamental and powerful structure supporting all language. The book includes readings of Plato, Prudentius, Dante, Spenser, Hegel, Goethe and Kafka.
Machosky is also the coordinator for the UH West Oʻahu Center of Teaching and Learning Excellence.
After receiving her doctorate in comparative literature from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, she held a three-year postdoctoral position at Stanford University and a one-year visiting assistant professorship at Cornell University. Machosky’s research focuses on allegory with previous publications including an edited volume Thinking Allegory Otherwise (Stanford University Press 2010).
