Allegorical

An allegory (from Greek : / "something else" and / "public speaking") is a form of indirect representation that employs a thing (a person, animate or inanimate, action) as sign of another thing, the latter often being an abstract idea or moral concept difficult to represent directly. In literature, allegory is a figure rhetoric which is to express an idea using a story or a performance that should serve as a basis of comparison. The etymological meaning is "another way of saying" using an image figurative or figurative.

Allegory of Water

Historia, allegory of the history
Painting Gysis Nikolaos (1892).

We can distinguish allegory figure of speech , or, more precisely, figure of "speech" and the allegory as a method of "invention".

Rarely extends beyond the first part of the sentence. This is actually a metaphor that is presented point by point. For example, when a lover exclaims: "It's a tigress! "He uses a metaphor. But he said: "The tiger is watching me, then jumped on me and devour the heart," is an allegory. When such an allegory is extended a little, one generally speaks of "metaphor".

Allegory-invention takes a more prominent and extends to an entire paragraph, chapter or even a book. This type of allegory is a story so the characters and events have a second sense symbolic. For example, the Lion of Jean de La Fontaine is in fact an allegory of the monarchy ^Literature

One of the first completely allegorical works of Western literature is the Psychomachia the Latin author Prudence. It depicts the battle of the vices and virtues that are fighting to dominate the human soul. Very influential, this long epic poem inspired poets and medieval authors, but also artists ^{Famous Allegories}

Hans Aachen Allegory of the triumph of justice, 1598, Munich, Alte Pinakothek

The ancient poets have often had recourse to allegories. In song VI (268-281) of the Aeneid, Virgil mentions the shadows of hell as allegories wandering, sorrow, remorse, fear, hunger, and eventually Discord:

Discordia demens vipereum crinem Vitti innexa cruenta .

Found Discord defeated by Joy in the Ode to Joy of Schiller , set to music by Beethoven in his ^9th symphony and chosen as the European anthem.

• Allegory of the Cave : An allegory is a table consisting of images or symbols, each with a specific sense that it is possible to decipher from the keys to accurate interpretation
• Allegory of Justice : A woman in one hand a sword in the other scales, a blindfold covering his eyes (although not always blindfolded)
• Allegory of the king: In the fables of La Fontaine , King Louis XIV was represented by a lion and his subjects by the fox (cunning, deceitful) and other animals. The Third Estate was designed symbolically in the guise of a sheep or a lamb.

Visual Arts

From the antiquity , sculptors have represented abstract ideas in the form of human or animal figures or symbolic objects. In the Middle Ages , the Romanesque and the Gothic use of allegory in the representation of Vices and Virtues , such as Justice with her sword and balance, shows that experience a long popularity. The vogue of allegory in the fine arts is expanding in the ^sixteenth and ^seventeenth centuries with that of books of emblems , and reached its peak in the Baroque art is often inspired by the encyclopedic work of Cesare Ripa , Iconologia (1593 ).

Allegorical figures national

Before Uncle Sam: Columbia

Freedom in the guise of revolutionary France

• Germany : Germania
• England : John Bull , Britannia
• Canada : the Royal Canadian Mounted Police
• United States : Columbia , Uncle Sam and the Statue of Liberty
• France : Marianne , the Gallic cock
• Switzerland : Helvetia

Bibliography

• John Pepin, Myth and allegory, Aubier, 1958.
• Edited by Brigitte Prez-Jean and Patricia Eichel-Lojkine, Proceedings of International Symposium of Montpellier (10-13 January 2001): "The Allegory, from Antiquity to the Renaissance," Paris, 2004, 688 p. (ISBN 27453100070 ) See also

  Related articles

  • Medieval allegory ( in ) in medieval literature and mythography
  • Allegorical meaning : one of the four senses of Scripture in theology
  • Allegory of the Cave of Plato
  • Mother Nature
  • Sign | Symbol

  External Links

  • Office de la langue French
  • Gods and allegories on the coins of the Roman Empire

  Notes

  1. The lion is an allusion to Louis XIV and allows the poet to represent power, Fables, Book XI, fable I, the Lion
  2. The furious strife haired viper retained by bloody ribbons
  3. Republic, Book VII, The Fundamentals of philosophy, Nathan edition, 2005.
  4. An Allegory of sustainable development
  • Literature portal
  • Gateway to the History of Art

Leave a Reply