allegory

In literature, the description or illustration of one thing in terms of another, or the personification of abstract ideas. The term is also used for a work of poetry or prose in the form of an extended metaphor or parable that makes use of symbolic fictional characters.

An example of the use of symbolic fictional character in allegory is the romantic epic The Faerie Queene (1590–96) by Edmund Spenser in homage to Queen Elizabeth I. Allegory is often used for moral purposes, as in John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress (1678). Medieval allegory often used animals as characters; this tradition survives in such works as Animal Farm (1945) by George Orwell.

The most influential allegory in the Western world, the 13th-century Roman de la Rose, is a poetic allegory of sexual love. The first part, by Guillaume de Lorris, is ‘purer’, but the long, rambling continuation by Jean de Meung best typifies much later allegorical writing, where scenes from common life carry additional meanings with some sort of loose didactic intention.

allegory

In art, a story or message represented visually. Sometimes the literal meaning in the painting is clear, but some examples can be interpreted as having another, parallel meaning. In the second example, the literal content of the work can stand for more abstract ideas, perhaps suggesting a corresponding, deeper symbolic sense than is first apparent.

The imagery of Aboriginal art is richly allegorical of the Dreamtime creation myth that underpins the Aboriginal religion. Another example is the strange and often disturbing imagery used by Hieronymous Bosch in such paintings as The Garden of Earthly Delights (1505–10).