Allegoria

Neal Stewart

Allegory comes from the Greek word allegoria, meaning “the description of one thing under the image of another.” Quintilian defines it as "continuous metaphor uninterrupted by clarification." It is a combination of the Greek words allos (another, different) and agoreuein (speak openly), and Plato refers to it in Phaedrus as an amusing diversion not for serious philosophers. Allegory goes from a diversion outside the scope of proper philosophy in Ancient Greece, to an avenue for significant intellectual inquiry in the Medieval period, to a controversial point of departure for post-modern scholars today.

In Phaedrus, Plato refers (through Socrates’ character) to allegory as a sort of crude philosophy. Plato writes, “Now I quite acknowledge that these allegories [such as Orithyia and Pharmacia] are very nice…”, but they are ultimately unworthy of philosophical pursuit (229). This allegory also includes chimeras, pegasuses, and other fantastical creatures and events that would not hold up to the rules of logic. “I have no leisure for such inquiries…” (229). It is interesting to note that roughly ten years after writing Phaedrus, Plato included “The Allegory of the Cave” in his Republic as a way to explain philosophy to uneducated people. Perhaps Plato felt that allegories used to make philosophical points were acceptable, while those used to make religious / mythological points were not.

Plato’s negative view of religious allegory is abandoned several centuries later, as allegory instead becomes an avenue for medieval intellectual inquiry. Around the 5th century CE, as Christianity grew in popularity, allegory became a way for the church to reconcile the differences between the Old and New Testaments. Over the next thousand years, as the Church grew in scope and power across western society, understanding God’s instructions for humankind became a central facet of life; these instructions were accessible through reading allegory into religious texts.

Today, the term is often a dividing point for rhetoricians regarding the factual accuracy of allegory. If the universe is a story, “traditional” scholars would seek to find the facts (universal Truths), whereas post-modern scholars are more interested in the interpretation of the story. PM scholars argue that we don’t have access to “the facts,” so the story can only be seen as an extended metaphor (thus allegorical, ala Quintilian). The interpretation of the metaphor leads to the idea of socially-constructed truths versus universal Truths.

Allegory has turned 180-degrees from Plato’s time, where it was a “crude” way to study the world, to today where (according to post-modern scholars) allegory might be the only way to study the world.

Sources:
greektexts.com Phaedrus.

W. T. H. Jackson The Nature of Romance Yale French Studies, No. 51, Approaches to Medieval Romance (1974), pp. 12-25

Online Etymology Dictionary “allegory”