Allegory

(Gk allegoria, speaking otherwise) An allegory is a story or image

with several layers of meaning: behind the literal or surface meaning lie one or
more secondary meanings, of varying degrees of complexity. The origins of
allegory as a narrative strategy are ancient and certainly pre-date literate culture.
Much myth (q.v.), for example, adopts allegory in its endeavours to explain
phenomena through analogy and correspondence. Allegory is closely related to
other literary forms, for example the fable, parable and exemplum (qq.v.), and it
has sometimes been viewed as extended metaphor (q.v.). In these various
guises, allegory may be satirical, salutary or moralistic in purpose. The form may
be narrative or pictorial (or both, as in emblembooks, q.v.) In literature, early
examples of allegory include Platos celebrated story of the cave in The Republic
and the influential Psychomachia by Prudentius (4th c. ad) which instituted a
mode of psychological allegory, the externalization of a struggle within. In
medieval literature, allegory underpins the dream vision genre (q.v.) in which the
narrator customarily falls asleep at the outset of the tale and undergoes an
experience with strong symbolical and allegorical overtones. The morality plays
(q.v.) of the same period are essentially dramatized allegories in which
personified virtues and vices act out the cosmic struggle for the soul of Mankind.
John Bunyans The Pilgrims Progress (1678) draws upon this same tradition to
produce an extended allegory of Christian salvation. In early modern English
literature, Spensers epic The Faerie Queene is perhaps the most ambitious
allegory, or dark conceit as the poet terms it in his prefatory letter. More overtly
radical in their signification are the allegorical satires of Dryden, exemplified in
his Absalom and Achitophel (1681) and The Hind and the Panther (1687) which
treat contemporary controversies in religion and politics. With its general
privileging of realism over stylized signification, there are perhaps fewer
incontrovertible examples of allegory in the novel, although notable exceptions
include an early example of the form in Swifts Gullivers Travels (1726) and
Orwells 20th c. fable Animal Farm. In general, the use of allegory is fundamental
to the scriptures of all the major religions. It is highlighted in the New Testament,
where much of Christs teaching is conducted in parables, and in the Quran,
where, on www.Atibook.ir 22 allegro numerous occasions, God is said to speak in
parables to humankind. Allegory, largely typological, pervades both the Old and
New Testaments. The events in the Old Testament were considered types or
figures of events in the New Testament. In The Song of Solomon, for instance,
Solomon is seen as a type of Christ and the Queen of Sheba represents the
Church, as explained by Matthew (12:42). The Paschal Lamb was also seen as a
type of Christ. Scriptural allegory was mostly based on a vision of the universe
as bifurcated into two worlds, the spiritual and the physical. The visible world was
seen as a revelation of the invisible. St Thomas Aquinas analysed this kind of
allegory in his Summa (13th c.) in terms of four levels of meaning or
interpretation. This fourfold exegesis can be applied, for instance, to the City of
Jerusalem. On the literal level, it is the Holy City; allegorically, it stands for the
Church militant; morally or as a trope, it signifies the just soul; and anagogically
(q.v.) or mystically, it represents the Church triumphant. In his Convivio and his
Letter to Can Grande Della Scala Dante elaborated this theory in literary terms.

Alliteration (L repeating and playing upon the same letter) A figure of

speech in which consonants, especially at the beginning of words or stressed

syllables, are repeated. It is a very old device indeed in English verse (older than
rhyme) and is common in verse generally. It is used occasionally in prose. In OE
poetry, alliteration was a continual and essential part of the metrical scheme and
until the late Middle Ages was often used thus. However, alliterative verse (q.v.)
becomes increasingly rare after the end of the 15th c. and alliteration like
assonance, consonance and onomatopoeia (qq.v.) tends more to be reserved
for the achievement of the special effect. There are many classic examples, like
Coleridges famous description of the sacred river Alph in Kubla Khan: Five miles
meandering with a mazy motion www.Atibook.ir 23 alliterative verse Many others
are less well known, like this from the first stanza of R. S. Thomass The Welsh
Hill-Country: Too far for you to see The fluke and the foot-rot and the fat maggot
Gnawing the skin from the small bones, The sheep are grazing at Bwlch-yFedwen, Arranged romantically in the usual manner On a bleak background of
bald stone. Alliteration is common in tongue-twisters (q.v.) and jingles (q.v.). It is
also used in nonsense verse (q.v.), as in: Be lenient with lobsters, and ever kind
to crabs, And be not disrespectful to cuttle-fish or dabs; Chase not the CochinChina, chaff not the ox obese, And babble not of feather-beds in company with
geese. See also assonance; cacophony; internal rhyme; rhyme

blank verse This was introduced by the Earl of Surrey in the 16th c. in his
translation of the Aeneid (c. 1540) and consists of unrhymed five-stress lines;
properly, iambic pentameters (q.v.). Surrey probably took the idea from the versi
sciolti (freed verse) of Molzas Italian translations of the Aeneid (1539). It has
become the most widely used of English verse forms and is the one closest to the
rhythms of everyday English speech. This is one of the reasons why it has been
particularly favoured by dramatists. It was almost certainly first used for a play
by Sackville and Norton in Gorboduc (1561), and then became the standard verse
for later Tudor and Jacobean dramatists who made it a most subtle and flexible
instrument: for instance, Thomas Heywood in A Woman Killed with Kindness
(1603): O speak no more! For more than this I know, and have recorded Within
the red-leaved table of my heart. Fair, and of all beloved, I was not fearful Bluntly
to give my life into your hand, And at one hazard all my earthly means. Go, tell
your husband; he will turn me off, And I am then undone. I care not, I: Twas for
your sake. Perchance in rage hell kill me, I care not, twas for you. Say I incur
www.Atibook.ir 83 blazon The general name of villain through the world, Of
traitor to my friend; I care not, I. Beggary, shame, death, scandal, and reproach,
For you Ill hazard all: why, what care I? For you Ill live, and in your love Ill die.
Thereafter it was used a great deal for reflective and narrative poems, notably by
Milton in Paradise Lost (1667). During the late 17th c. and the first half of the
18th c. it was used much less often. Dryden, Pope, indeed the majority of 18th c.
poets, preferred the heroic couplet (q.v.). However, Thomson used it in The
Seasons (172630); so did Young in Night Thoughts (1742) and Cowper in The
Task (1785). Wordsworth especially, and Coleridge, made much use of it. All the
poets of the Romantic period (q.v.) wrote blank verse extensively, and so did
most of the great poets of the 19th c. It is still quite widely practised today and
dramatists like Maxwell Anderson and T. S. Eliot experimented with it in freer
forms in their plays. See rhyme