ALLEGORY • DICCIONARIO INGLES.COM • Definition of Allegory

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/ˈæləgˌɔri/ Listen

noun

Allegory n. (pl. allegories)

A figurative sentence or discourse, in which the principal subject is described by another subject resembling it in its properties and circumstances. The real subject is thus kept out of view, and we are left to collect the intentions of the writer or speaker by the resemblance of the secondary to the primary subject.

Anything which represents by suggestive resemblance; an emblem.

(Paint. & Sculpt.) A figure representation which has a meaning beyond notion directly conveyed by the object painted or sculptured.

Synonyms: Metaphor; fable. Allegory, Parable. "An allegory differs both from fable and parable, in that the properties of persons are fictitiously represented as attached to things, to which they are as it were transferred.... A figure of Peace and Victory crowning some historical personage is an allegory. "I am the Vine, ye are the branches" () is a spoken allegory. In the parable there is no transference of properties. The parable of the sower () represents all things as according to their proper nature. In the allegory quoted above the properties of the vine and the relation of the branches are transferred to the person of Christ and His apostles and disciples." Note: An allegory is a prolonged metaphor. Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress" and Spenser's "Faerie Queene" are celebrated examples of the allegory.

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Etymology of 'Allegory'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Allegory" Quotes from Famous Books

... that many heroes of adventure, before him and after him, have made in fairy lands forlorn. The scenery and incidents of that strange ride are also among the common possessions of fairy romance. One dimly discerns in them the glimmer of an ancient allegory, of an old cosmogony, that may possibly be derived from the very infancy of the world, when human thought began to brood over the mysteries of life and time. There are the Broad Path of Wickedness and the Narrow ...

— The Balladists - Famous Scots Series • John Geddie

... retorting, as he assisted me to doff my doublet. "Do I jest? Diable! you Gascons are a slow-witted folk! I have a taste for allegory, my friend, but that never yet was accounted so low ...

— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini

... particularities of limited place and individual name. We must distinguish between the abstractly typical and the universal. The representative artist does not conceive an abstraction and then seek to find a symbol for it. That is the method of allegory, where spring, for example, is figured as a young woman scattering flowers. Allegory is decorative rather than representative in intention. The artist receives his inspiration and stimulus from some actual concrete ...

— The Gate of Appreciation - Studies in the Relation of Art to Life • Carleton Noyes

... allegory—an allegory of English and American life. I am quite aware that with you the sexes have reversed positions, that the man has sunk into a money-making machine, who slaves so that his wife may spend, while the woman devotes her whole ...

— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... tapestries that screened the door of the room in which the music was being given with his impetuous, vigilant, desperate gaze, appeared, with a soldierly impassibility or a supernatural faith—an allegory of alarums, incarnation of alertness, commemoration of a riot—to be looking out, angel or sentinel, from the tower of dungeon or cathedral, for the approach of the enemy or for the hour of Judgment. Swann had now only to ...

— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust

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