Dodona's Grove

Dodona's Grove (1640) is a historical allegory by James Howell, making extensive use of tree lore.

This curiosity purports to be a history of Europe since the accession of James I of England put into an allegorical form in which the roles of the various kings, princes and nobles are taken by various trees. Its effect, however, is not quite what that would imply, as the tree-allegory remains on the level of the emblem, whereas the action demands if not people, then anthropomorphs convincingly capable of some sort of agency. Before the book is properly underway there is already a tension between its tenor and supposed vehicle. Having set up an allegorical apparatus, with a comprehensive 'Clavis', or key of the significance of the various names which he uses, as well as illustrations of the various trees, the text itself, though conforming vaguely to an allegorical mode, is anything but smooth in its allegorical workings, anything but subtle in its jarring clashes of style and treatment, which take it far away from earlier, more consistently executed examples of the genre.

In England at the time of the publication of Dodona's Grove, the dominant paradigm for the writing of allegorical romance, particularly when of a political nature was John Barclay's Argenis, a work which told the story of the religious conflict in France under Henry III and IV. Both of the dedicatory poems which precede Dodona's Grove mention the volume, and indeed there are similarities between Barclay and Howell in their attitudes towards writing, but what they have to say equally points up their differences. In Barclay, the process is much more subtle, more comprehensively articulated as an allegory which is inclusive of all its aspects. Instead of putting forward any kind of manifesto himself, he lets one of the characters in the romance tell of "a new form of writing", which he intends to invent, and thus places the text's genesis within its own fictional space:

Like Barclay, Howell eschews conventional historical form, but the earlier writer's subtle combination of raison d'etre and moral considerations are quite distinct from Howell's intentions, or rather what he would like us to believe those intentions are. He writes as he does on the authority of the ancients, rather than political expedients he claims:

The book was written and published four years before the creation of the Royal Society, College for the Promoting of Physical-Mathematic Experimental Learning. As a Greco-Latin scholar he was well aware of Temenos. The tree of knowledge, which has been the watch phrase of the academic and scientist, has been replaced, in the last 30 years, by Genomics and genetics. Knowing the kingdoms and phyla, upon the tree, and even Darwinian species, is now more of a child's working tool, than that of a mature scientist. The suggestion that he was interested in Galen's medicine is far from inaccurate, since some of the trees of medical knowledge were known even then.

...
Wikipedia