Talk:Allegory

ALLEGORY-A NARRATIVE(STORY)IN WHICH CHARACTERS AND ASETTINGS STAND AS SYMBOLS EXPRESSING TRUTHS ABOUT HUMAN LIFE]Link title]] "Old Man and the Sea" is an allegory.(User:166.66.202.80)

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Apologia for a short list

The entry has a short list of allegories appended to it. I have pared some, and my action needs explaining. All works of fiction with wider resonance can be seen as bearing upon allegory: the entry states this. Where invented characters are fully-rounded and take on aspects of personality not connected to the emblem that is their assigned allegorical role, then the fiction is less and less of an allegory— and a less useful example in this list. I am adding two pure allegories that were influential in Late Antiquity and in the Renaissance [groans in the audience]. But don't y'all see, if fictions with some allegorical content are added to the list, it will become trivialized and will not help explain to the reader what an allegory is like. That is the sole use of this list— or any list added to a Wikipedia entry in fact. The entries for many books are enriched by a linked reference to Allegory. The converse is not necessarily true: only books should be listed here that enrich the reader's understanding of allegory. Does this seem too disciplined? Do we need a List of fictions with some allegorical content? If so, there's your redlink. --Wetman 16:05, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I agree about the need of the ability to understand.

I agree with Wetman. I see nothing especially allegorical about Dune or The Chronicles of Narnia. (Lewis denied that the Narnia books were an allegory, by the way.)

It would be great to define a distinction between "allegory" and "roman à clef" in this article or there. —JerryFriedman 04:32, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

...but the disguised identities in the roman à clef aren't even symbolic or metaphorical, let alone allegorical. Where there's no connection, how would we make a distinction?--Wetman 11:44, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

The connection, of course, is that both have a code. What is Animal Farm, mentioned in this article—allegory, roman à clef, or both? I just opined this in rec.arts.sf.written: 'Thus if _Animal Farm_ just had animals in place of people in Russian history, it would be a roman à clef. But we can rot13 "the pigs sold Boxer to the knackers" and get "the Soviet leaders betrayed and exploited the workers"--that's what Orwell was telling us (as if we didn't know). That makes it an allegory.' Any thoughts?

To take another example, Dune is mentioned in this article, and the article on it used to have a section on "Dune as an allegory", which cited resemblances to T. E. Lawrence's war and the Mahdist rebellion in Sudan (or specifically the film Khartoum). I changed the section title to "Historical parallels to Dune", but apparently some people see "allegory" as including any multi-point resemblance between a story and something else. For all I know, some of those people might be famous critics such as Northrop Frye, which means we shouldn't dismiss such a definition. So maybe different senses of "allegory" need to be addressed more clearly than they are now. —JerryFriedman 16:06, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

Maybe the problem lies with undifferentiated lists themselves. If each item in the list of allegories had a paragraph explaining its allegorical and its non-allegorical aspect, the list would be more useful-- but open to those original research taggers. --Wetman 17:00, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

The list is bloated again with things like Wizard of Oz. Anyone else want to be Bad Cop? --Wetman (talk) 22:30, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

Titian's painting

Prudence is not exemplified by the three animals, which are emblematical of the virtues of the three ages (the kingly lion of adulthood). Prudence is when a man (the face facing the spectator) makes decisions in the light of past experience (the old man) to prepare for the future (the young face). --80.8.200.250 19:40, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

A mistaken example

I removed the following: " In film, one notable example is the 1960s British television series The Prisoner, starring Patrick MacGoohan. The village in which he is kept in has been said to be an allegory of state control and has many interpretations, from Marxism and beyond." The very fact that a variety of interpretations are possible should give a more wary reader a cue that this is not an example of allegory. There are many evocative works of art with resonant symbolic content. --Wetman 00:19, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

A note on the Tolkien reference

Tolkien actually began to write the middle earth legendarium while being treated for trench fever. He was ill for several months and then spent several more months convalescing in England. It was during this time that he began to write his first middle earth work, the fall of gondalin. The only reason that I mention this is that the proof offered to refute the allegory claim for the lord of the rings is faulty, regardless of the validity of the claim. Just a note. 70.231.144.171 04:23, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

I think the main argument against LoTR being allegory is that Tolkien specifically said that it wasn't (and I assume he knows). I don't know about the timing of all his Middle-Earth stuff -- he'd been writing it for a good while before LoTR, as I understand things -- you are probably right on that. However, the article only specifically talks about Lord of the Rings. --_{tiny plastic} Grey Knight ⊖ 17:04, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

The Lottery???

How is The Lottery an allegory? Answer: it isn't. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 138.163.0.42 (talk) 22:14, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

Gojira

Producer Tomoyuki Tanaka stated that the original "Gojira" was an allegory for the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the Bikini test in which a Japanese fishing boat was accidentally caught in the fallout. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.212.142.202 (talk) 21:55, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

Plagiarism

Intro on website: The introduction seems to be stolen word for word from this website: http://www.siue.edu/~ejoy/allegory_notes.htm n allegory (from Greek αλλος, allos, "other", and αγορευειν, agoreuein, "to speak in public") is a figurative representation conveying a meaning other than and in addition to the literal. It is generally treated as a figure of rhetoric, but an allegory does not have to be expressed in language: it may be addressed to the eye, and is often found in painting, sculpture or some form of mimetic art.

Intro on article: An allegory (from Greek: αλλος, allos, "other", and αγορευειν, agoreuein, "to speak in public") is a figurative mode of representation conveying a meaning other than the literal.

Allegory is generally treated as a figure of rhetoric, but an allegory does not have to be expressed in language: it may be addressed to the eye, and is often found in realistic painting, sculpture or some other form of mimetic, or representative art. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Haridic (talk • contribs) 04:01, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

Protected

DO NOT UNPROTECT THIS PAGE. Another user (possibly a vandal) had written the words {only boobs follow}. This qualifies for the lower quality of wikipedia articles.

Thank you, Adasarathy —Preceding unsigned comment added by Adasarathy (talk • contribs) 13:49, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

Lacking an opening statement

This article still lacks an opening definition that says "An allegory is..." A sentence or a brief paragraph is needed. --Wetman (talk) 21:51, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, the lack of a definition is glaring here. 198.109.51.222 (talk) 14:13, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

Borges

Borges hated allegories. --201.254.248.5 (talk) 14:09, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

Repetition

first 4 paragraphs are repeated after examples!IIIIIIIII (talk) 02:42, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

Wizard of OZ

Some have in fact interpreted the Wizard of Oz, or at least some aspects of it, as an allegory for the monetary debates of the early 20th century. Specifically the yellow brick road(gold) and the silver slippers. With some claiming the Cowardly Lion represented William Jennings Bryan. I don't know widely held this interpretation really is though.