Allegory
An
allegory (from
Greek αλλος,
allos, "other", and αγορευειν,
agoreuein, "to speak in public") is a figurative mode of
representation conveying a
meaning other than (and in addition to) 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, an interpretation which the author sharply denied, stating, "I cordially dislike allegory in all of its manifestations." [
1]
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.
Allegory has been a favourite form in the
literature of nearly every nation. The New Testament uses of "Babylon" and the Beast of
Revelation are familiar.
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. 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. |
Some elaborate and successful specimens of allegory are to be found in the following works, arranged in approximately chronological order:
*
Aesop –
Fables *
Plato –
The Republic (
Plato's allegory of the cave)
*
Plato –
Phaedrus (
Chariot Allegory)
*
Book of Revelation (for allegory in Christian theology, see
typology (theology))
*
Martianus Capella –
De nuptiis philologiæ et Mercurii*
The Romance of the Rose*
William Langland –
Piers Plowman*
Pearl*
Dante Alighieri –
The Divine Comedy*
Everyman*
Edmund Spenser –
The Faerie Queene*
John Bunyan –
Pilgrim's Progress*
Jonathan Swift –
A Tale of a Tub*
Joseph Addison –
Vision of Mirza*
E. T. A. Hoffmann –
Princess Brambilla*
Nathaniel Hawthorne –
The Great Carbuncle*
Edgar Allan Poe –
The Masque of the Red DeathModern 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:
*
William Golding –
Lord of the Flies*
George Orwell –
Animal Farm*
Arthur Miller –
The Crucible*
Philip Pullman –
His Dark Materials*
Hualing Nieh –
Mulberry and Peach*
David Lindsay –
A Voyage to Arcturus*
Rex Warner –
The Aerodrome 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, from
Dune to
The Chronicles of Narnia, or in UK comtemporary culture, the Komedy Kollective's bawdy yet subversive, non-preachy comedy (shock horror) musical aimed at a young
American-Pie style audience,
Restart.
Allegorical films include:
*
Fritz Lang's
Metropolis*
Ingmar Bergman's
The Seventh Seal*
Stanley Kubrick's
2001: A Space Odyssey (film)*
El Topo*
The Matrix 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*
Allegory in the Middle Ages*
Allegory in Renaissance literature*
Allegorical sculpture*
Roman à clef*
Good brief definition of Allegory*
Dictionary of the History of Ideas: Allegory in Literary history
*
Restart by the Komedy Kollective*
Electronic Antiquity, Richard Levis, "Allegory and the Eclogues" Roman definitions of
allegoria and interpreting Vergil's
Eclogues.
*
Frye, Northrop, 1957.
Anatomy of Criticism*
Michel Foucault,
The Order of Things
