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.