XPost: alt.books.cs-lewis, rec.arts.books, alt.usage.english   
   XPost: alt.english.usage, alt.religion.christianity   
   From: hayesstw@telkomsa.net   
      
   On Tue, 17 May 2016 07:53:01 -0600, Jerry Friedman   
    wrote:   
      
   >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.   
      
   I think it's now several years since I saw discussions about that on   
   aue, but when I did, I think the descriptivists outnumbered the   
   prescriptivists.   
      
   >> 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.   
      
   I think she goes too far, but agree with her point about many people   
   going too far the other way, and calling things allegories that are   
   not allegories at all.   
      
   I disagree with her when she says that allegories can only be about   
   abstract qualities that are personified. I think allegories can also   
   be about people and events in the world. I don't think it's wrong to   
   call "Animal Farm" an allegory, for instance.   
      
   >> 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.   
      
   I think allegory was popular back then, though, and all sorts of   
   non-allegorical works were given allegorical interretations.   
      
      
   --   
   Steve Hayes   
   Web: http://www.khanya.org.za/stevesig.htm   
        http://www.goodreads.com/hayesstw   
        http://www.bookcrossing.com/mybookshelf/Methodius   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)