. 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.]]
Allegory is a figurative mode of representation conveying meaning other than the literal. Allegory communicates its message by means of symbolic figures, actions or symbolic representation. 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. Simply put, an allegory is a device used to present an idea, principle or meaning, which can be presented in literary form, such as a poem or novel, or in visual form, such as in painting or sculpture. As a literary device, an allegory in its most general sense is an extended metaphor. As an artistic device, an allegory is a visual symbolic representation. An example of a simple visual allegory is the image of the grim reaper. Viewers understand that the image of the grim reaper is a symbolic representation of death. Nevertheless, images and fictions with several possible interpretations are not allegories in the true sense. Furthermore, not every fiction with general application is an allegory.
Etymology
First coined in English 1382, the word "allegory" comes from
Latin "allegoria", the
latinisation of the
Greek "ἀλληγορία" (
allegoria), "veiled language, figurative", from "ἄλλος" (
allos), "another, different" + "ἀγορεύω" (
agoreuo), "to harangue, to speak in the assembly" and that from "ἀγορά" (
agora), "assembly".
Allegory
Northrop Frye discussed what he termed a "continuum of allegory", ranging from what he termed the "naive allegory" of
The Faerie Queene, 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.
Many ancient religions are based on an astrologic allegories, that is, allegories of the movement of the Sun and the Moon as seen from the Earth. Examples include the cult of Horus/Isis.
The classical era
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). 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; Capella's allegory was widely read through the Middle Ages.
Other early allegories are found in the Hebrew Bible, for instance in the extended metaphor in Psalm 80 of the Vine, which is Israel and Ezekiel 16 and 17.
The medieval era
Medieval thinking accepted allegory as having a
reality underlying any rhetorical or fictional uses. The allegory was as true as the 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 on which is based a demonstration with 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" .
In the late 15th 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.
The denial of medieval allegory as found in the 11th-century works of Hugh of St Victor and Edward Topsell's Historie of Foure-footed Beastes (London, 1607, 1653) and its replacement in the study of nature with methods of categorization and mathematics by such figures as naturalist John Ray and the astronomer Galileo is thought to mark the beginnings of early modern science.
The modern era
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 is an allegory for the
World Wars, in spite of
J. R. R. Tolkien's emphatic statement in the introduction to the second 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."
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.
List of allegorical works by genre
Art
's
Allegory of Age Governed by Prudence, with three human heads symbolising age and the triple-headed beast (dog, lion, wolf) standing for prudence.]]
.]]
at her right and
Death looking over her left shoulder. Two cherubs are removing the weighty crown from her tired head.]]
Some elaborate and successful specimens of allegory are to be found in the following works, arranged in approximate chronological order:
Ambrogio Lorenzetti; "Good Government in the City" and "Bad Government in the City"
Sandro Botticelli – La Primavera (Allegory of Spring)
Albrecht Dürer – Melencolia I
Bronzino – Venus, Cupid, Folly, and Time
Artemisia Gentileschi – Self-Portrait as the Allegory of Painting; Allegory of Inclination
The English School's "Allegory of Queen Elizabeth" painted circa 1610.
Jan Vermeer – The Allegory of Painting
Literature
Literature of the classical era
Aesop – Fables
Plato – The Republic ("Plato's allegory of the cave")
Plato – Phaedrus (Chariot Allegory)
Euripides – The Trojan Women
Qu Yuan – Encountering Trouble
Book of Revelation (for allegory in Christian theology, see typology (theology)
Martianus Capella – De nuptiis philologiæ et Mercurii
Literature of mediaeval era
Prudentius – Psychomachia
Christine de Pizan – The Book of the City of Ladies
William Langland – Piers Plowman
Pearl
Dante Alighieri – The Divine Comedy
Everyman
Edmund Spenser – The Faerie Queene
Literature of modern era
Edwin Abbott Abbott – Flatland
Joseph Addison – Vision of Mirza
Jorge Luis Borges – "The Library of Babel" and "The Babylon Lottery"
Peter S. Beagle – The Last Unicorn
John Bunyan – Pilgrim's Progress
William M. Burwell – White Acre vs. Black Acre
Albert Camus – The Plague, The Stranger, and Myth of Sisyphus
Wu Cheng'en — The Journey to the West
J.M. Coetzee – Waiting for the Barbarians
Charles Dickens – A Christmas Carol
William Golding – Lord of the Flies
Daniel Handler – A Series of Unfortunate Events
Nathaniel Hawthorne – "The Great Carbuncle", "Young Goodman Brown"
E. T. A. Hoffmann – Princess Brambilla
John Irving – A Prayer for Owen Meany
C.S. Lewis – The Chronicles of Narnia: generic allegorical elements of good and evil, as well as many Christian themes, expressed in a narrative with strong fantasy fiction elements and credible characters: not fully an allegory.
David Lindsay – A Voyage to Arcturus
George MacDonald – Phantastes
Naguib Mahfouz – Children of Gebelawi
Bernard Malamud – The Natural
Cormac McCarthy – The Road
Herman Melville – The Confidence-Man
Hualing Nieh – Mulberry and Peach
Herman Melville – Moby Dick
George Orwell – Animal Farm
Edgar Allan Poe – "
The Masque of the Red Death" (though Poe did not believe in allegory, this story is generally assumed to be one)
Philip Pullman – His Dark Materials
Jose Saramago – Blindness (novel)
Anna Sewell – Black Beauty
John Steinbeck – Of Mice and Men
Jonathan Swift – A Tale of a Tub and Gulliver's Travels (political allegory)
Koushun Takami – Battle Royale
Rex Warner – The Aerodrome
Naguib Mahfouz – Children of Gebelawi
Jack London- "A Piece of Steak", short story about youth vs. old age
Film
Fritz Lang's Metropolis
Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal
El Topo
, the Cold War
The Matrix
The Virgin Suicides
District 9, Apartheid
Gojira
Cannibal Holocaust, sensationalism
Foodland (film)
Ana's Playground
The Wall (film)
''Planet of the Apes (1968 film),racism, creationism, evolution, animal rights, anti-nuclear politics, McCarthyism, and socio-economic stratification.
* Beneath the Planet of the Apes, Vietnam War, torture, Catholicism, jingoism, Mutual assured destruction.
Television
The Twilight Zone (varied themes)
Star Trek all series, (varied themes, though frequently addressed the issues of prejudice and racism)
The Prisoner
Comics
Various X-Men comics (mutants as an allegory for racial minorities, and more recently the LGBT community)
The manga Hanako and the Teller of Allegory calls a story given form from peoples' belief in it an allegory
See also
Allegory in the Middle Ages
Allegory in Renaissance literature
Allegorical sculpture
Cultural depictions of Philip II of Spain
Literary technique
Plot device
Roman à clef
Semiotics
References
Further reading
Frye, Northrop (1957) Anatomy of Criticism.
Foucault, Michel (1966) The Order of Things.
External links
Brief definition of Allegory
Dictionary of the History of Ideas: Allegory in Literary history
Eclogues"">Electronic Antiquity, Richard Levis, "Allegory and the Eclogues" Roman definitions of allegoria and interpreting Vergil's Eclogues.
Category:Allegory
Category:Rhetorical techniques
Category:Literary devices
Category:Greek loanwords
