Allegory

“ Allegory is figurative writing, in which some outward object or event is described in such a way that we apply the description to humanity, to our mental or spiritual experiences. The object of allegory, as a rule, is to teach moral lessons, and in this it is like a drawn-out fable and like a parable. ”

“ Allegory is when one thing is said and another meant: as when by one deed another is intended: which other thing, if it be visible, the whole is simply an allegory, if invisible and heavenly, an anagoge. Also an allegory is when one state of things is described by another: as when the patience of Christ, and the sacraments of the Church are set forth by mystical words or deeds. ”

“ The allegory, parable, or fable tells its story as if true, leaving the reader or hearer to discover its fictitious character and learn its lesson. All these are, in strict definition, fictions; but the word fiction is now applied almost exclusively to novels or romances. An allegory is a moral or religious tale, of which the moral lesson is the substance, and all descriptions and incidents but accessories, as in "The Pilgrim's Progress." ”

“ But some people will say that all this may be very fine, but that they cannot understand it on account of the allegory. They are afraid of the allegory, as if they thought it would bite them: they look at it as a child looks at a painted dragon, and think it will strangle them in its shining folds. ”

“ The great literary beauty of the "Revelation" depends on the exquisite use of allegory; the leaves of the tree of life are for the healing of the nations; the water of the river of life is for everyone that thirsteth.
Allegory and parable distinguished
Mention of Hawthorne's use of allegory calls to mind the distinction a student of narrative types must make between parable on the one hand and a particular kind of allegory on the other, that kind in which there are no abstractions. He asks himself, What is the difference when both narratives have only people for actors? ”

“ There seems to be no doubt, that an historical poem admits the embellishment of allegory, as well as of metaphor, simile, or other figure. Moral truth, in particular, is finely illustrated in the allegorical manner. It amuses the fancy to find abstract terms, by a sort of magic, converted into active beings; and it is delightful to trace a general proposition in a pictured event. But allegorical beings should be confined within their own sphere ”

“ The sage, the satirist, and the seer, for prophet he proved to be, veiled his head in allegory; he published no other names than those of the virtues and the vices; and to avoid personality, he contented himself with personification.
A voluminous allegory is the rudest and the most insupportable of all poetic fictions; it originates in an early period of society—when its circles are contracted and 187 isolated, and the poet is more conversant with the passions of mankind than with individuals. ”

“ As much as it delights in works of the mind just so much is it rejected by genius. Fiction harmonizes with it, allegory is opposed to it. It is chivalrous and not heroic; agreeable, brilliant, clever, melancholy, sentimental, but it could never be either profound or sublime. ”

“ An extended fictitious narrative, constructed on the principle of one continued allegory, is a topic which critical learning has not expressly treated on. An allegorical epic never occurred to the ancient legislator of poetry; and modern critics have consented to define Allegory as “that art in which one thing is related, and another understood.”
But it has been subsequently discovered that this definition was too narrow to comprehend the multiform shapes which allegory assumes, either in the subtility or the grossness of its nature. ”

“ Hawthorne's "Celestial Railroad" is an example of humorous-satiric allegory. Parable, we recall, is always spiritual, allegory often so, and fable never.
Working definition
When you set out to write, therefore, you will have in mind a general summary somewhat like this: An allegory is a narrative of imaginary events designed to teach a series of utilitarian or spiritual truths—the actors in the events being either individuals with typical follies, vices, and virtues, or personified abstractions that go through individual and particular experiences. ”

“ But the allegory helps him out with what he means notwithstanding; for although the highest aim of poetry is to say the deepest things in the simplest manner, humanity must turn from mode to mode, and try a thousand, ere it finds the best. The individual, in his new endeavour to make "the word cousin to the deed," must take up the forms his fathers have left him, and add to them, if he may, new forms of his own. In both the great revivals of literature, the very material of poetry was allegory. ”

“ No allegory, I well know, and least of all no historical allegory, can ever be strained to fit quite tight—the lives of individuals and those of centuries, their modes of intermixture, genesis, and inheritance are far different; but if an allegory is to possess any meaning at all, we must surely apply it wherever it will fit most easily and completely ”

“ We behold the figure, we cannot lift the veil. The author himself is not called upon to explain what he designed. An allegory is a personation of distinct and definite things,—virtues or qualities,—and the key can be given easily; but a writer who conveys typical meanings, may express them in myriads. He cannot disentangle all the hues which commingle into the light he seeks to cast upon truth ”

“ This is sometimes forgotten, but it is clear enough that an allegory such as the Pilgrim’s Progress has a quite different effect on the mind, and requires a different sort of imagination, from the allegorical work which starts from a given text and spins out some sort of moral from it. Any one with a little ingenuity can make an allegorical interpretation of any matter. It is a different thing to invent and carry on an allegorical story. ”

“ In many recent examples of allegory and symbolism we get suggestive impressions of the other life, of the soul’s realities. Some of these have the inevitable words, the fatal phrases that seem to penetrate into the real heaven and hell for us. ”

“ When you write an allegory, you will not be so trite as this illustrative example, but will get a good idea, a good spiritual lesson, and will teach it with a unique and original plot in which the adventures themselves are interesting. The world's greatest prose allegory, "Pilgrim's Progress," has always been read for the story. The "Faerie Queene" as a metrical romance and a triple allegory of religion, Elizabeth's court, and the perfect man, has been a storehouse for prose narrators as well as for poets for three hundred years. Practically all the old morality plays were allegories. ”

“ The allegory is a double story, or two stories in one. While one story is being told, another, a deeper and often a still more interesting story, is caught by the imagination or reason. Fables and parables are short allegories with one definite moral. The allegory has been the favorite form of story among almost all nations, and is especially pleasing to children. The Bible contains a number of beautiful allegories, one being the comparison [Pg 31] of Israel to a vine, in the Eighteenth Psalm. Æsop’s fable of the stomach and its members is an allegory. ”

“ Narrative allegory is distinguished from mythology as reality from symbol; it is, in short, the proper intermedium between person and personification. Where it is too strongly individualized, it ceases to be allegory ”

“ But although more [117] individual, the allegory is less human than the parable; for the happenings of the parable are always probable, while those of the allegory may be probable, improbable, or so fantastic as to be wholly impossible. ”

“ The Allegorical theory supposes that all the myths of the ancients were allegorical and symbolical, and contained some moral, religious, or philosophical truth or historical fact, under the form of an allegory, but came in process of time to be understood literally. ”

“ That only added to the skill of the poet; that only added rainbow colours to the fabric of the invention.
Then there was always the allegory, with which, in fact, anything on earth could be connected, in the course of which not only could no compliment be excessive, but no attribution could be so certain that it was not able, under pressure, to be denied. Positive persons, in our rash age, do much profane the allegory, which, nevertheless, is essential to all fairy poetry. ”

“ If, however, the Tractarian fiction-writers had confined themselves to allegory there would be no necessity to do more than glance at them, for allegory, on the obvious Biblical suggestion, has been a constant instrument of combined religious instruction and pastime. ”

“ Allegory generally is far less common in the antique than it is in the romantic art of the Middle Ages, although it must be added that such romance as it possesses is not really referable to allegory. The frequent appearance of allegorical conception at this particular epoch of human history is to be thus explained. From a certain point of view we find that the content of the Middle Ages is preoccupied with particular types of individuality and the personal aims, generally focussed in love and honour, and resulting in vows, wanderings, and adventures, which are common to them. ”

“ The Latin eclogues of the renaissance are distinguished from all other forms of allegory by the obscure and recondite allusions that they affected. There were few among their authors for whom the narration of simple loves and sorrows or the graces of untutored nature possessed any attraction; we find them either making their shepherds openly discuss contemporary affairs, or more often clothing their references to actual events in a sort of pastoral allegory, fatuous as regards its form and obscure as regards its content. ”

“ And indeed with almost any mediaeval man or woman, it might keep talking, as a way of speech, obtrusively, conventionally, ad nauseam. For indeed in treatise after treatise even of the better men, allegory seems on the one hand to become very foolish and perverse, banal, intolerably talking on and on beyond the point; or again we sense its mechanism, hear the creaking of its jaws, while no living voice emerges,—and we suspect that the mystery of life, if it may not be compassed by direct statement, also lies deeper than allegorical conventions. ”

“ Allegory and its exposition of what is termed the double or secret sense, is a topic on more than one account important. The mystical art of types and symbols has given rise to some extraordinary abuses, and even to artifices, which may be considered as an imposture practised on the human understanding. ”

“ The poet prefixes indeed the name of a particular virtue to each book, but, with slender reference to it, he surrenders himself freely to his abundant flow of ideas, and to whatever fancy or invention tempts him, and ranges unrestrained over the whole field of knowledge and imagination. In the first two books, the allegory is transparent and the story connected. The allegory is of the nature of the Pilgrim's Progress. It starts from the belief that religion, purified from falsehood, superstition, and sin, is the foundation of all nobleness in man ”

“ Allegory has her place, and a lofty one, in literature; but when her plants cover the garden and run to seed, Allegory herself is ashamed of her children: the loveliest among them are despised for the general obtrusiveness of the family. Imitation not only brings the thing imitated into disrepute, but tends to destroy what original faculty the imitator may have possessed. ”

“ The knowledge and ingenuity of the state of mind, that could so construct the allegory, as an harmonious picture of the works of nature, is absolutely wonderful, and has my admiration, even my ejaculatory adoration ”

“ Allegory.—Allegories and spiritual significations, when applied to faith, and that seldom, are laudable; but when they are drawn from the life and conversation, they are dangerous, and, when men make too many of them, pervert the doctrine of faith. ”

“ You must have a definite action going forward in which your personages take a necessary part. Allegory fell into disrepute in the past because of the attempts of lazy and careless writers. There is evidence of its revival as a popular type. A present-day writer in the Atlantic Monthly has shown us how vigorous, informing, and pungent it may be: "The Novelist's Allegory" is entirely worth while with its good old-fashioned flavor. ”

“ Letter and Allegory.—The Divina Commedia is a vision and an allegory. It is a vision of the world beyond the grave; it is an allegory, based upon that vision, of the life and destiny of man, his need of light and guidance, his duties to the temporal and spiritual powers, to the Empire and the Church. In the literal sense, the subject is the state of souls after death. In the allegorical sense, according to the Epistle to Can Grande, the subject is “man as by freedom of will, meriting and demeriting, he is subject to Justice rewarding or punishing” (Epist. x. 11) . ”

“ But the true allegory that appeals to all is the presentment of noble natures and of noble deeds. Where, for most people at any rate, is the "allegory" in the Theseus or the Venus of Milo? Yet is not the whole race of man the better for them?
Work, therefore, quietly and continually at the great themes ready set for you in the story of the past and "understanded [Pg 261] of the people," while you are patiently strengthening and maturing your powers of art in safety, sheltered from yourself, and sheltered from the condemnation due to the too presumptuous assumption of apostleship. ”