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February 12, 2006
Allegory begins with "A"
Roberts, Ch. 10 -- Jerz: American Lit II (EL 267)
"Allegories are often concerned with morality and with religion but we may also find political and social allegories. To the degree that literary works are true not only because of the lives of their main characters, but also because of life generally."
So ... an allegory is sort of a moral threaded throughout the (longer) story. I think I get it, but I admit there's a fine line there between symbolism and allegory, as Roberts points out.
So the moral "slow and steady wins the race" (tortoise and the hare) would become more of an allegory if it were tangible in a longer story that a fable ... right?
Posted by MattHampton at February 12, 2006 11:54 PM
Comments
A symbol can stand for more than one thing. An allegory is what you've got when you have a large number of symbols that are all part of the same system of meanings.
Thus, a story that features a rose, a cleansing walk through rain, a midnight meeting, and a near drowning will be full of symbolsm, but the rose really has nothing to do with the midnight meeting, and the midnight meeting doesn't relate directly to the near-drowning. All those symbols help to tell the story, but don't necessarily point to anything outside the story.
But Orwell's 1984 or Swift's Gulliver's Travels presents a whole series of symbolic encounters that work together to convey a single, unified message. Both of these stories make sense on the literal level (the first as science fiction/intrigue and the second as an adventure), but they also have a deeper political and artistic meaning that follows alongside the main story.
Posted by: Dennis G. Jerz at February 13, 2006 12:31 AM
I think the basic, core story about the tortoise and the hare probably needs more symbolism to be considered an allegory, as you suggest, Matt. Though I have heard some versions of the story that make the story a lot longer and include various obstacles that the hare puts in the tortoise's way, which might make those versions closer to being allegories. I did a quick browse online, but I couldn't find any versions like those I remember.
Nonetheless, I think that's actually how most allegories are formed: they build off of a very basic moral lesson that was already taught in a shorter, less complicated piece. Of course, they add a lot more details to both the story and the lesson itself, making both much more sophisticated and much less apt to be described in a few sentences.
Posted by: ChrisU at February 13, 2006 11:51 PM