Allegory

An allegory is a term for a figure of speech.^[2] It is a story or picture with a hidden meaning. The characters in allegories are symbols which represent particular ideas. The story has a figurative meaning, not just a literal one.

Allegory is an example of rhetoric, but an allegory does not have to be a story in language. It may be something to look at, such as a painting or sculpture.

An allegory is like a long metaphor. People have to use their imagination to understand what it is trying to say. A fable or parable is a short allegory with one basic idea (a moral).

Sometimes people say that stories have meanings which the author, in fact, did not intend. For instance, many people have suggested that The Lord of the Rings was an allegory for the World Wars, but, in fact, it was written well before the outbreak of World War II, and J.R.R. Tolkien said that it was not an allegory. In this way people sometimes change the author’s ideas. Sometimes they do it for their own political reasons.

1. ↑ The Codex Parisinus graecus 2327 in the Bibliothèque Nationale, France, referred to in "alchemy", The Oxford Classical Dictionary, Oxford University Press, 2012, ISBN 0199545561
2. ↑ "Allegory" at Rhetoric.byu.edu; retrieved 2012-1-14.