Allegory

An allegory (from Greek αλλος, allos, "other", and αγορευειν, agoreuein, "to speak in public") is a figurative representation conveying a meaning other than and in addition to the literal. It 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 painting, sculpture or some form of mimetic art. The etymological meaning of the word is wider than that which it bears in actual use. An allegory is distinguished from a metaphor by being longer sustained and more fully carried out in its details, and from an analogy by the fact that the one appeals to the imagination and the other to the reason. The fable or parable is a short allegory with one definite moral.

the characters in an 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. Since meaningful stories are applicable to larger issues, allegories may be read into many significant stories, sometimes distorting their meaning. J.R.R. Tolkien's distaste for allegory is famous.

The allegory has been a favourite form in the literature of nearly every nation. The Hebrew scriptures present frequent instances of it, one of the most beautiful being the comparison of the history of Israel to the growth of a vine in the 80th Psalm. In the Rabbinic tradition allegorical readings were applied to every text, a tradition that was inherited by Christians, for whom allegorical similitudes are the basis of exegesis. See also hermeneutics.

In classical literature two of the best known allegories are the cave of shadowy representations 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. Some elaborate and successful specimens of allegory are to be found in the works of authors:

• Edmund Spenser – The Faerie Queene
• Jonathan Swift – A Tale of a Tub
• Joseph Addison – Vision of Mirza
• John Bunyan – Pilgrim's Progress
• Aesop – Fables
• Jean de La Fontaine – Fables
• René Daumal – A Night of Serious Drinking
• William Golding – Lord of the Flies
• George Orwell – Animal Farm
• Arthur Miller – The Crucible

Allegorical films include:

• Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal; El Topo etc.

Allegorical artworks include:

• Sandro Botticelli – La Primavera (Allegory of Spring)
• Albrecht Dürer – Melancholia I
• Artemisia Gentileschi – Self-Portrait as the Allegory of Painting; Allegory of Inclination
• Jan Vermeer – The Allegory of Painting

Classical allegories include:

• Plato – Chariot Allegory & Allegory of the Cave

External links

• Good brief definition of Allegory
• Dictionary of the History of Ideas: Allegory in Literary history