Allegory

Classical allegory

The origins of allegory reach back at least to Homer, who used quasi-allegorical personifications such as Terror (Deimos) and Fear (Phobos). The title of first allegorist is disputed between Theagenes of Rhegium, whom Porphyry called the first allegorist, and Pherecydes of Syros, both active in the 6th century BCE. The debate hinges on the distinction between speaking allegorically and interpreting allegorically.

Theagenes, responding to moral critiques of Homer, proposed that Homer's gods represented physical elements—for instance, Hephestus stood for Fire. Some scholars argue that Pherecydes' cosmogonic writings, which placed Time (Chronos) in his genealogy of the gods as a reinterpretation of Kronos, anticipated Theagenes' work. In classical literature, two well-known allegories are the Cave in Plato's Republic and the story of the stomach and its members in the speech of Menenius Agrippa.

Biblical allegory

The Hebrew Bible contains early allegories, such as the extended metaphor in Psalm 80 of a vine representing Israel's conquest of the Promised Land. Ezekiel 16 and 17 also use allegory, depicting the capture of that vine by a mighty Eagle to symbolize Israel's exile to Babylon. Allegorical interpretation of the Bible was common in early Christianity and continues; for example, Fortunatianus of Aquileia's recently rediscovered Fourth Commentary on the Gospels employs a figurative approach that decodes the text allegorically.

Medieval allegory

Medieval thought treated allegory as having a reality underlying any rhetorical or fictional uses, as true as surface appearances. The Papal Bull Unam Sanctam (1302) uses allegorical details of metaphors as facts to demonstrate the unity of Christendom with the pope as its head. The late 15th-century Hypnerotomachia, with its woodcut illustrations, reflects the influence of pageants and masques on allegorical representation. The denial of medieval allegory, seen in works by Hugh of St Victor and Edward Topsell, and its replacement with categorization and mathematics by figures such as John Ray and Galileo, is considered to mark the beginnings of early modern science.

Poetry and fiction

Not every resonant work of modern fiction is allegorical, and some are clearly not intended as such. Henry Littlefield's 1964 article suggested that L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz may be understood as a plot-driven fantasy intended to discuss politics of the time, though George MacDonald emphasized in 1893 that a fairy tale is not an allegory. J. R. R. Tolkien stated he cordially disliked allegory and distinguished it from applicability, which resides in the reader's freedom.

He resented the suggestion that the One Ring in The Lord of the Rings was an allegory of nuclear weapons, noting that had that been his intention, the book would have ended with an arms race rather than the Ring's destruction. Allegorical poetry has both a literal and a symbolic meaning. Examples include Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene, where knights stand for virtues; William Shakespeare's The Tempest, an allegory of the civilization/barbarism binary in colonialism; and John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress, where the journey symbolizes the soul's ascension from earth to Heaven.

Did You Know?

• Northrop Frye discussed a 'continuum of allegory' ranging from 'naive allegory' to more private allegories of modern paradox literature.
• Allegoresis is the act of reading a story as an allegory, even when the author may not have intended it.
• Examples of allegory in popular culture include works by Bertolt Brecht and C. S. Lewis's The Chronicles of Narnia.