Allegory (AL-uh-gor-ee, from Greek allos = other + agoreuein
= to speak) means "speaking in other terms," i.e., speaking
figuratively. The Ad Herennium defines
it as "a manner of speech denoting one thing by the letter of
the words, but another by their meaning." Quintilian calls it
an extended metaphor. In The Mystery of Rhetoric Unveiled,
John Smith notes "that in a Metaphor there is a translation of
one word only; in an Allegory, of many; and for that cause an
Allegory is called a continued Metaphor. And as a Metaphor may
be compared to a star in respect of beauty, brightnesse and
direction; so an Allegory may be likened to a constellation,
or a company of many stars. An Allegory is a sentence that
must be understood otherwise then the literal interpretation
shewes."
Allegories are always narrative––stories with metaphorical
significance, or metaphors that have been elaborated into
stories. The literal events in such tales point beyond
themselves to hidden meanings on some more abstract level,
usually moral, spiritual, religious, political, or historical.
The greatest allegories, like Dante's Divine Comedy and
Spenser's The Faerie Queene, are consistently
entertaining and believable (in a fictive sense, at least) on
the literal level, but they encourage readers to search for
non-literal significance in some of their details. In weaker,
more mechanical forms of allegory, almost no feeling of
reality inheres in the literal events. Readers regard them
solely as things to decode or translate into the real
meaning of the tale.
Allegories of this second type sometimes direct audience
interpretations by personifying abstract
qualities, turning them into human-like figures who can move
about in the world, acting and being acted on. The supreme
examples in English literature are the medieval play Everyman
and John Bunyan's novel Pilgrim's Progress, both of
which Joyce parodies in the Oxen of the Sun chapter.
Bunyan's protagonist is named Christian. Searching for heaven,
he is assisted by characters like Evangelist, Help, and
Goodwill and drawn backwards by people like Obstinate,
Pliable, and Mr. Worldly Wiseman.
Mr. O'Madden Burke's trio is cast in this kind of mold. His
one-sentence story does not ask to be taken literally.
Instead, his hearers are to understand that Youth is Stephen
Dedalus, the character of Experience leading him is Burke, and
Notoriety names Burke's journalistic colleagues––themselves.
