ALLEGORY,
pronounced AL uh gawr ee, is a story with more than one meaning. Most allegories have moral or religious
meanings. Famous allegories include the
fables attributed to Aesop, an ancient Greek writer. Aesop's fables seem to describe the adventures
of animals and human beings. But the
author actually wanted to teach his readers something about human nature.
One of Aesop's
best-known fables is "The Fox and the Grapes." On its surface, or its literal level of
meaning, the story tells of a fox who wants a bunch of grapes hanging above his
head. The fox tries desperately to reach
the grapes but cannot. He finally gives
up, saying that the grapes are probably sour anyway. The allegorical meaning of this story is that
people may pretend the things they cannot have are not worth having.
Allegories had
their greatest popularity during medieval and Renaissance times in Europe. The Divine Comedy, written by the Italian
author Dante Alighieri in the early 1300's, literally tells of a man's journey
to heaven through hell and purgatory.
Allegorically, the poem describes a Christian soul rising from a state
of sin to a state of blessedness. Other
allegories include the parables of Jesus, and The Faerie Queene, written by the
English poet Edmund Spenser in the late 1500's.
Allegories lost
popularity in Europe after about 1600, but some, such as Pilgrim's Progress
(1678, 1684) gained recognition in later times.
Allegory also exists in other ways.
Many novels include allegorical suggestions of an additional level of
meaning. Examples include Moby-Dick
(1851), a whaling adventure that raises issues of human struggle and fate in a
mysterious universe, and Lord of the Flies (1954), a story about shipwrecked
boys that examines the persistence of evil.
Contributor: Paul
Strohm
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Fables Golding, Sir Morality Play
Bunyan, John William Parable
Divine
Comedy Melville, Romance
Fable Herman Spenser, Edmund
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