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allegory

  (ăl'ĭ-gôr'ē, -gōr'ē) pronunciation
n., pl. -ries.
    1. The representation of abstract ideas or principles by characters, figures, or events in narrative, dramatic, or pictorial form.
    2. A story, picture, or play employing such representation. John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress and Herman Melville's Moby Dick are allegories.
  1. A symbolic representation: The blindfolded figure with scales is an allegory of justice.

[Middle English allegorie, from Latin allēgoria, from Greek, from allēgorein, to interpret allegorically : allos, other + agoreuein, to speak publicly (from agora, marketplace).]

allegorist al'le·go'rist n.
 
 

allegory, a story or visual image with a second distinct meaning partially hidden behind its literal or visible meaning. The principal technique of allegory is personification, whereby abstract qualities are given human shape—as in public statues of Liberty or Justice. An allegory may be conceived as a metaphor that is extended into a structured system. In written narrative, allegory involves a continuous parallel between two (or more) levels of meaning in a story, so that its persons and events correspond to their equivalents in a system of ideas or a chain of events external to the tale: each character and episode in John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress (1678), for example, embodies an idea within a pre‐existing Puritan doctrine of salvation. Allegorical thinking permeated the Christian literature of the Middle Ages, flourishing in the morality plays and in the dream visions of Dante and Langland. Some later allegorists like Dryden and Orwell used allegory as a method of satire; their hidden meanings are political rather than religious. In the medieval discipline of biblical exegesis, allegory became an important method of interpretation, a habit of seeking correspondences between different realms of meaning (e.g. physical and spiritual) or between the Old Testament and the New (see typology). It can be argued that modern critical interpretation continues this allegorizing tradition. See also anagogical, emblem, exemplum, fable, parable, psychomachy, symbol. For a fuller account, consult Angus Fletcher, Allegory (1964).

 

Work of written, oral, or visual expression that uses symbolic figures, objects, and actions to convey truths or generalizations about human conduct or experience. It encompasses such forms as the fable and parable. Characters often personify abstract concepts or types, and the action of the narrative usually stands for something not explicitly stated. Symbolic allegories, in which characters may also have an identity apart from the message they convey, have frequently been used to represent political and historical situations and have long been popular as vehicles for satire. Edmund Spenser's long poem The Faerie Queen is a famous example of a symbolic allegory.

For more information on allegory, visit Britannica.com.

 
Architecture: allegory

A figurative representation in which the meaning is conveyed symbolically.

allegory: Cathedral of Worms, 13th cent. The beast with four heads symbolizes the Four Gospels


 

Allegory in literature is the presentation of a subject under the guise of another suggestively similar. It was rarely written deliberately by the Greeks (but see ALCAEUS (1)). As a device of literary interpretation its most flourishing period was in the late fifth century BC when certain sophists found in the poets, particularly Homer and Hesiod, ‘hidden meanings’ of a cosmological or ethical nature. This kind of allegorizing was closely connected with etymology, at that time a pseudo-science which dealt in the ‘true’ meaning of words and names as revealed by assonances. Plato and the Alexandrian scholars rejected allegorical interpretation of literature. Its main proponents were the Stoic philosophers (third century BC onwards), who used it for the illustration and corroboration of their doctrines, and from them derive the surviving collections of allegorical interpretations of Homer.

The Romans, following the Greeks, found certain moral meanings implicit in Homer, and Horace took over Alcaeus' allegory of the ‘ship of state’, but they did not compose large-scale allegories. Instead they used numerous poetic conceits and personifications (such as calling the sea Neptune) often in a way that suggests rather the influence of symbolic painting. A Roman innovation was the allegorical representation of contemporary persons and events, as in Virgil's Eclogues, but perhaps this too had been done before by Theocritus (in Idyll 7), and scholars of both poets still dispute the degree of correspondence with real people. The profundity and ambiguity of much of the Aeneid led interpreters from the fourth century onward to find in it an allegory of ideas rather than of facts. Allegory entered Christian literature from Stoic sources. See also BUCOLIC.

 
in literature, symbolic story that serves as a disguised representation for meanings other than those indicated on the surface. The characters in an allegory often have no individual personality, but are embodiments of moral qualities and other abstractions. The allegory is closely related to the parable, fable, and metaphor, differing from them largely in intricacy and length. A great variety of literary forms have been used for allegories. The medieval morality play Everyman, personifying such abstractions as Fellowship and Good Deeds, recounts the death journey of Everyman. John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, a prose narrative, is an allegory of man's spiritual salvation. Spenser's poem The Faerie Queene, besides being a chivalric romance, is a commentary on morals and manners in 16th-century England as well as a national epic. Although allegory is still used by some authors, its popularity as a literary form has declined in favor of a more personal form of symbolic expression (see symbolists).

Bibliography

See C. S. Lewis, The Allegory of Love (1936); P. de Man, Allegories of Reading (1979); M. Quilligan, The Language of Allegory (1979)


 
(al-uh-gawr-ee)

A story that has a deeper or more general meaning in addition to its surface meaning. Allegories are composed of several symbols or metaphors. For example, in The Pilgrim's Progress, by John Bunyan, the character named Christian struggles to escape from a bog or swamp. The story of his difficulty is a symbol of the difficulty of leading a good life in the “bog” of this world. The “bog” is a metaphor or symbol of life's hardships and distractions. Similarly, when Christian loses a heavy pack that he has been carrying on his back, this symbolizes his freedom from the weight of sin that he has been carrying.

 
Poetry Glossary: Allegory

A figurative illustration of truths or generalizations about human conduct or experience in a narrative or description by the use of symbolic fictional figures and actions which resemble the subject's properties and circumstances.

 
Word Tutor: allegory
pronunciation

IN BRIEF: A moral story, sometimes with hidden meaning.

pronunciation Harriet used an allegory to teach the children a lesson about lying.

 
Wikipedia: allegory
Allegory of Music by Filippino Lippi. Tempera on panel, 61 × 51 cm, c. 1500.The "Allegory of Music" is a popular theme in painting; in this example, Lippi uses symbols popular during the High Renaissance, many of which refer to Greek mythology.
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Allegory of Music by Filippino Lippi. Tempera on panel, 61 × 51 cm, c. 1500.

The "Allegory of Music" is a popular theme in painting; in this example, Lippi uses symbols popular during the High Renaissance, many of which refer to Greek mythology.

An allegory (from Greek αλλος, , "other", and αγορευειν, agoreuein, "to speak in public") is a figurative mode of representation conveying a meaning other than the literal.

Allegory is generally treated as a figure of rhetoric, but an allegory does not have to be expressed in language: it may be addressed to the eye, and is often found in realistic painting, sculpture or some other form of mimetic, or representative art.

The etymological meaning of the word is broader than the common use of the word. Though it is similar to other rhetorical comparisons, an allegory is sustained longer and more fully in its details than a metaphor, and appeals to imagination, while an analogy appeals to reason or logic. The fable or parable is a short allegory with one definite moral.

Since meaningful stories are nearly always applicable to larger issues, allegories may be read into many stories, sometimes distorting their author's overt meaning. For instance, many people have suggested that The Lord of the Rings was an allegory for the World Wars, while in fact it was written well before the outbreak of World War II, and J.R.R. Tolkien's emphatic statement in the introduction to the American edition "It is neither allegorical nor topical....I cordially dislike allegory in all its manifestations, and always have done so since I grew old and wary enough to detect its presence."

Northrop Frye discussed what he termed a "continuum of allegory", ranging from what he termed the "naive allegory" of The Faerie Queen, to the more private allegories of modern paradox literature. In this perspective, the characters in a "naive" allegory are not fully three-dimensional, for each aspect of their individual personalities and the events that befall them embodies some moral quality or other abstraction; the allegory has been selected first, and the details merely flesh it out.

Examples

Allegory has been a favourite form in the literature of nearly every nation. It represents many tales. In classical literature two of the best-known allegories are the cave in Plato's Republic (Book VII) and the story of the stomach and its members in the speech of Menenius Agrippa (Livy ii. 32); and several occur in Ovid's Metamorphoses. In Late Antiquity Martianus Capella organized all the information a fifth-century upper-class male needed to know into an allegory of the wedding of Mercury and Philologia, with the seven liberal arts as guests; Matianmus Capella's allegory was widely read through the Middle Ages.

Medieval thinking accepted allegory as having a reality underlying any rhetorical or fictional uses. The allegory was as true as superficial facts of surface appearances. Thus, the bull Unam Sanctam (1302) presents themes of the unity of Christendom with the pope as its head in which the allegorical details of the metaphors are adduced as actual facts which take the place of a logical demonstration, yet employing the vocabulary of logic: "Therefore of this one and only Church there is one body and one head—not two heads as if it were a monster... If, then, the Greeks or others say that they were not committed to the care of Peter and his successors, they necessarily confess that they are not of the sheep of Christ" (complete text).

In the late fifteenth century, the enigmatic Hypnerotomachia, with its elaborate woodcut illustrations, shows the influence of themed pageants and masques on contemporary allegorical representation, as humanist dialectic conveyed them.

Titian's Allegory of Age Governed by Prudence, with three human heads symbolising age and the triple-headed beast (dog, lion, wolf) standing for prudence.
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Titian's Allegory of Age Governed by Prudence, with three human heads symbolising age and the triple-headed beast (dog, lion, wolf) standing for prudence.

Some elaborate and successful specimens of allegory are to be found in the following works, arranged in approximately chronological order:

Modern allegories in fiction tend to operate under constraints of modern requirements for verisimilitude within conventional expectations of realism. Works of fiction with strong allegorical overtones include:

Where some requirements of "realism", in its flexible meanings, are set aside, allegory can come more strongly to the surface, as in the work of Bertold Brecht or Franz Kafka on one hand, or on the other in science fiction and fantasy, where an element of universal application and allegorical overtones are common, as with Dune.

Allegorical films include:

The English School's Allegory of Queen Elizabeth with Father Time at her right and Death looking over her left shoulder.  Two cherubs are removing the weighty crown from her tired head.
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The English School's Allegory of Queen Elizabeth with Father Time at her right and Death looking over her left shoulder. Two cherubs are removing the weighty crown from her tired head.

Allegorical artworks include:

See also

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External links

Further reading


 
Translations: Translations for: Allegory

Dansk (Danish)
n. - allegori

Nederlands (Dutch)
allegorie

Français (French)
n. - allégorie

Deutsch (German)
n. - Allegorie, Sinnbild

Ελληνική (Greek)
n. - αλληγορία

Italiano (Italian)
allegoria

Português (Portuguese)
n. - alegoria (f)

Русский (Russian)
аллегория

Español (Spanish)
n. - alegoría

Svenska (Swedish)
n. - allegori

中文(简体) (Chinese (Simplified))
寓言, 象征, 讽喻, 寓意画

中文(繁體) (Chinese (Traditional))
n. - 寓言, 象徵, 諷喻, 寓意畫

한국어 (Korean)
n. - 풍유, 우화

日本語 (Japanese)
n. - 寓意物語, 寓意, 象徴, 寓話

العربيه (Arabic)
‏(الاسم) إستعاره, قصه رمزيه‏

עברית (Hebrew)
n. - ‮משל, אלגוריה‬


 
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Dictionary. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2007, 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2007. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.  Read more
Literary Dictionary. The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms. Copyright © Chris Baldick 2001, 2004. All rights reserved.  Read more
Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. © 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. All rights reserved.  Read more
Architecture. McGraw-Hill Dictionary of Architecture and Construction. Copyright © 2003 by McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.  Read more
Classical Literature Companion. The Concise Oxford Companion to Classical Literature. Copyright © 1993, 2003 by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.  Read more
Columbia Encyclopedia. The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition Copyright © 2003, Columbia University Press. Licensed from Columbia University Press. All rights reserved. www.cc.columbia.edu/cu/cup/  Read more
Grammar Dictionary. The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition Edited by E.D. Hirsch, Jr., Joseph F. Kett, and James Trefil. Copyright © 2002 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin. All rights reserved.  Read more
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