SOURCE: "The Allegory in Part I of Hudibras" in The Huntington Library Quarterly, Vol. XXI, No. 4, August, 1958, pp. 323-43.

In the following essay, Miller maintains that despite Butler's denial that Hudibras has any allegorical intent, the epic exhibits allegorical characteristics.

Literary scholarship has asserted persistently that Hudibras contains allegory.¹ Yet, in a letter to George Oxenden, which Ricardo Quintana brought to light in 1933, Butler ostensibly denied allegorical intent by identifying Hudibras and Ralpho as a West Country knight and his squire whom he had come to know quite well during the wars. "As for ye Story I had it from ye Knts owne Mouth," Butler says, "& is so farr from being feign'd, yt it is upon record, for there was a suite of law upon it betweene ye Knt, & ye Fidler, in wch ye Knt was overthrowne to his great shame, & discontent, for wch he left ye Countrey...