- Key People:
- John Bunyan
- Paolo Veronese
- Fazil Iskander
- Arnold Böcklin
- Related Topics:
- parable
- Dance of death
- emblem book
- dream allegory
- Totentanz
allegory
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What is an allegory in art and literature?
Allegory in art and literature is a symbolic representation of abstract ideas or generalizations about human experience through characters, objects, and events. It conveys a meaning not explicitly stated in the narrative, often with multiple levels of interpretation.
Literary allegories use material objects, persons, and actions to express abstract ideas, while in painting, allegorical narrative subjects can exalt the arts or carry warnings. Examples range from Plato's Allegory of the Cave to George Orwell's Animal Farm, and John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress.
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How does an allegory use characters or symbols to represent ideas?
Allegories use characters and symbols to represent ideas or convey meanings not explicitly stated in the narrative. These can express abstract ideas through material objects, people, and events.
In personification allegory, characters embody abstract concepts, like Knowledge, Beauty, or Death in Everyman, mirroring human nature. Symbolic allegory uses characters or things with recognizable identities that also represent an idea. For example, in Dante’s The Divine Comedy, Virgil is both the author of The Aeneid and human reason. Animal Farm by George Orwell is a political allegory where animals represent figures in the Bolshevik Revolution.
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What is the difference between an allegory and a simple metaphor?
Allegory and metaphor are literary devices that use symbolism, but they function on different scales. A metaphor is a figure of speech where a word or phrase is applied to an object or action to suggest a likeness or analogy.
An allegory is a narrative in which characters and events represent abstract ideas or moral qualities. Allegories use symbolic figures, objects, and actions to convey truths or generalizations about human conduct or experience. Unlike a simple metaphor, an allegory is a sustained narrative with multiple levels of meaning.
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Can you name a famous allegorical story or painting and explain its meaning?
One famous allegorical story is The Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan. Published in 1678, this allegorical tale recounts, in symbolic form, the story of Bunyan’s own conversion. The story follows Christian's pilgrimage to the Heavenly City, and the narrative may seem episodic, but Calvinist theology provides a firm underlying ground plan.
Christian's journey includes combats with giants and monsters, such as Apollyon and Giant Despair, who embody spiritual terrors. Though symbolic throughout, the story maintains a feel of common life because Bunyan's genius prevents the allegory from becoming too inward and obsessed.
Another allegorical work is Liberty Leading the People, an 1830 oil painting by French artist Eugène Delacroix commemorating the July Revolution in Paris.
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How do authors or artists use allegory to express their beliefs or social messages?
Allegory uses symbolic figures, actions, or objects to express truths or generalizations about human experience. Artists and authors throughout history have used allegory to convey their beliefs and social messages in various ways.
During the Renaissance, paintings shifted toward more terrestrial and humanistic themes, using religious narratives to mirror the real world. Some artists use allegory to point out stern morals, human folly, and sin. Others dramatize state commissions. Animal Farm by George Orwell is a political allegory expressing disillusionment with the Bolshevik Revolution, illustrating how one oppressive system was replaced by another.
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In what ways has allegory been important in history and culture?
Allegory, derived from the Greek word meaning "to speak figuratively," has been important throughout history and culture as a way to convey truths through symbolic representation.
Allegory has been used to express political and historical situations and has long been popular as a vehicle for satire, such as in George Orwell's Animal Farm, which critiques the Bolshevik Revolution. In religious art, allegory appears in both subject matter and imagery, like the cross or the lamb. Theologians have used allegorical interpretation to find deeper spiritual meanings in the Bible. Myths have been used to understand a society, providing a model for human behavior and guidance for crucial elements in human existence—war and peace, life and death, truth and falsehood, good and evil.
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allegory, a symbolic fictional narrative that conveys a meaning not explicitly set forth in the narrative. Allegory, which encompasses such forms as fable, parable, and apologue, may have meaning on two or more levels that the reader can understand only through an interpretive process. (See also fable, parable, and allegory.)
Literary allegories typically describe situations and events or express abstract ideas in terms of material objects, persons, and actions. Such early writers as Plato, Cicero, Apuleius, and Augustine made use of allegory, but it became especially popular in sustained narratives in the Middle Ages. Probably the most influential allegory of that period is the 13th-century French didactic poem Roman de la rose (Romance of the Rose). This poem illustrates the allegorical technique of personification, in which a fictional character—in this case, The Lover—transparently represents a concept or a type. As in most allegories, the action of the narrative “stands for” something not explicitly stated. The Lover’s eventual plucking of the crimson rose represents his conquest of his lady.
Other notable examples of personification allegory are John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress (1678, 1684) and the 15th-century morality play Everyman. Their straightforward embodiments of aspects of human nature and abstract concepts, through such characters as Knowledge, Beauty, Strength, and Death in Everyman and such places as Vanity Fair and the Slough of Despond in The Pilgrim’s Progress, are typical examples of the techniques of personification allegory.
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Another variant is the symbolic allegory, in which a character or material thing is not merely a transparent vehicle for an idea, but rather has a recognizable identity or narrative autonomy apart from the message it conveys. In Dante’s The Divine Comedy (c. 1308–21), for example, the character Virgil represents both the historical author of the Aeneid and the human faculty of reason, while the character Beatrice represents both the historical woman of Dante’s acquaintance and the concept of divine revelation. The symbolic allegory, which can range from a simple fable to a complex, multilayered narrative, has often been used to represent political and historical situations and has long been popular as a vehicle for satire. In the verse satire Absalom and Achitophel (1681), for example, John Dryden relates in heroic couplets a scriptural story that is a thinly veiled portrait of the politicians involved in an attempt to alter the succession to the English throne. A 20th-century example of political allegory is George Orwell’s novel Animal Farm (1945), which, under the guise of a fable about domestic animals, expresses the author’s disillusionment with the outcome of the Bolshevik Revolution and shows how one tyrannical system of government in Russia was replaced by another.
Allegory may involve an interpretive process that is separate from the creative process; that is, the term allegory can refer to a specific method of reading a text, in which characters and narrative or descriptive details are taken by the reader as an elaborate metaphor for something outside the literal story. For example, the early Church Fathers sometimes used a threefold (later fourfold) method of interpreting texts, encompassing literal, moral, and spiritual meanings. One variety of such allegorical interpretation is the typological reading of the Old Testament, in which characters and events are seen as foreshadowing characters and events in the New Testament. The character Beloved in Toni Morrison’s novel Beloved (1987) may also be considered an allegorical figure who carries the collective memory and grief of slavery.