Extending a metaphor through an entire speech or passage, or representing abstract concepts through the image of an acting person (‘personification’). Allegory is also referred to as an extended metaphor: for example, Reverie…a...

A tale in which abstract ideas are expressed as concrete symbols. Allegories were used by the Biblical *prophets—such as *Ezekiel’s characterisation of the Kings of *Israel as shepherds (Ch. 34:2–16) and *Hosea’s depiction of...

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 and Violence. By GORDON TESKEY. Ithaca, NY, and London: Cornell University Press. 1996. xiv+195 pp. [pound]27.50. In his Preface to Chaucer D. W. Robertson outlined a continuous tradition of allegorical theory and practice extending from the sixth century bc to the...

Reinventing Allegory. By Theresa M. Kelley. (Cambridge Studies in Romanticism, 22). Cambridge, New York and Melbourne: Cambridge University Press. 1997. xv +345 pp. [pound]37.50;$54.95. In Reinventing Allegory, Theresa M. Kelley discusses a wide array of works which she gathers under the...

The movie is set, very realistically, in a fascist outpost in the mountains in 1944. Franco's troops are trying to root out the guerillas. The heroine of the movie is Ofelia, a girl of 9 or 10 whose widowed mother has, horrifyingly, remarried a fascist...

The finest bit of painting featured in Veronese’s Allegories: Virtue, Love and Exploration in Renaissance Venice, an exhibition devoted to Paolo Veronese on display at the Frick Collection, isn’t exactly part of the show; it’s in the accompanying catalog. Opposite the title page is a...