XPost: alt.books.cs-lewis, rec.arts.books, alt.usage.english   
   XPost: alt.english.usage, alt.religion.christianity   
   From: jerry_friedman@yahoo.com   
      
   On 5/17/16 2:35 AM, Steve Hayes wrote:   
   > Save the Allegory!   
   >   
   > An entire literary tradition is being forgotten because writers use   
   > the term allegory to mean, like, whatever they want.   
   >   
   > By Laura Miller   
   >   
   > I’m not much of a language stickler. I roll my eyes when people argue   
   > over the Oxford comma, and I couldn’t care less when someone says they   
   > “could care less.” As a descriptivist (rather than a prescriptivist),   
   > I’m mostly OK with seeing the meaning of words evolve and transform   
   > over time, because that’s what a living language does.   
   ...   
      
   Very daring to copy that into a.u.e.   
      
   > What people usually mean when they call something an allegory today is   
   > that the fictional work in question can function as a metaphor for   
   > some real-world situation or event. This is a common arts journalist’s   
   > device: finding a political parallel to whatever you happen to be   
   > reviewing is a handy way to make it appear worth writing about in the   
   > first place. Calling that parallel an allegory serves to make the   
   > comparison more forceful. Fusion says that Batman v Superman is a   
   > “none-too-subtle allegory for the fight between Republican   
   > presidential hopefuls Donald Trump and Ted Cruz.” (It is not.) The   
   > Hollywood Reporter calls Zootopia an “accidental anti-Trump   
   > allegory”—this despite the fact that there is no literary form less   
   > accidental than allegory. The meaning of the word has drifted so far   
   > that even works that aren’t especially metaphorical get labeled as   
   > allegory: A film about artistic repression in Iran is a “clunky   
   > allegory” for ... artistic repression in Iran.   
      
   She's got a point there.  I also dislike the idea that calling a fantasy   
   or science fiction story an allegory makes it respectable somehow.   
      
   > Allegory or metaphor: The distinction might seem obscure and academic   
   > to many readers. Shouldn’t allegory be grateful to get any attention   
   > at all? Isn’t it just an archaic literary mode that nobody uses   
   > anymore? Yes and no. About the only people creating true allegories   
   > today are political cartoonists. But a culture never entirely discards   
   > its roots, and allegory, which first appeared in the waning years of   
   > the Roman Empire,   
      
   Ahem.  See for example Plato's /Republic/, Psalm 80, and Ezekiel 16-17.   
      
   > is one of the foundations of Western literature.   
   ...   
      
   See also /Encountering Sorrow/ (/Li Sao/, I'm told), a Chinese classic   
   of the third century B.C., I'm told.   
      
   > See it here:   
   > https://t.co/kVOkvPEMhH   
      
   --   
   Jerry Friedman   
   "No Trump" bridge-themed political shirts: cafepress.com/jerrysdesigns   
   Bumper stickers ditto: cafepress/jerrysstickers   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)