Allegory - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Allegory - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: As a literary device, an allegory in its most general sense is an extended metaphor. Allegory has been used widely throughout the histories of all forms of art, largely because it readily illustrates complex ideas and concepts in ways that are comprehensible to its viewers, readers, or listeners. Allegories are typically used as literary devices or rhetorical devices that convey hidden meanings through symbolic figures, actions, imagery, and/or events, which together create the moral, spiritual, or political meaning the author wishes to convey.[1]





One of the best known examples is Plato's Allegory of the Cave, a part of his larger work The Republic. In this allegory, there are a group of people who have lived chained in a cave all of their lives, facing a blank wall (514a-b). The people watch shadows projected on the wall by things passing in front of a fire behind them and begin to ascribe forms to these shadows, using language to identify their world (514c-515a). According to the allegory, the shadows are as close as the prisoners get to viewing reality, until one of them finds his way into the outside world where he sees the actual objects that produced the shadows. He tries to tell the people in the cave of his discovery, but they do not believe him and vehemently resist his efforts to free them so they can see for themselves (516e-518a). This allegory is, on a basic level, about a philosopher who upon finding greater knowledge outside the cave of human understanding, seeks to share it as is his duty, and the foolishness of those who would ignore him because they think themselves educated enough.[2]



Many ancient religions are based on astrological 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.



Allegory has an ability to freeze the temporality of a story, while infusing it with a spiritual context. 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.



Since meaningful stories are nearly always applicable to larger issues, allegories may be read into many stories which the author may not have recognized. This is allegoresis, or the act of reading a story as an allegory. For instance, many people have suggested that The Lord of the Rings is an allegory for the World Wars, although Tolkien has dismissed this. Other examples of allegory in popular culture that may or may not have been intended include the works of Bertolt Brecht, and even some works of science fiction and fantasy, such as The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis and A Kingdom Far and Clear: The Complete Swan Lake Trilogy by Mark Helprin.