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 22:29:38 -0600, Jerry Friedman   
    wrote:   
      
   >On 5/17/16 3:28 PM, Tak To wrote:   
   >> On 5/17/2016 9:53 AM, 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   
   >...   
   >   
   >>>> 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.   
   >>   
   >> Well, allegory was defined in the original article (by Laura   
   >> Miller) as   
   >>   
   >>   An allegory, in short, is not just another word for a metaphor.   
   >>   In essence, it’s a form of fiction that represents immaterial   
   >>   things as images. [...]   
   >>   
   >> So if I understand her correctly, none of your examples are   
   >> allegories because they are not fiction.   
   >   
   >They seem like fiction to me.  The author of Psalm 80 doesn't expect us   
   >to believe that God transplanted a vine from Egypt that grew to reach   
   >the Mediterranean and the Euphrates.   
   >   
   >In the /Republic/, I was thinking of the story of the cave.   
      
   I would say that those are metaphors rather than allegories.   
      
   I can't think of any allegories in the Bible, but allegorical   
   interpretatuions were popular, especially in Late Antiquity.   
      
   I recall hearing an an allegorical interpretation in a sermon once,   
   where the preacher was speaking about the conquest of Ai by the   
   Israelites, and Achan took some loot, which caused the Israelites to   
   lose their next battle (Joshua 7).   
      
   The preacher interpreted this to mean that even a tiny bit of sin in   
   our lives couuld alienate us from God, and treated Achan and his   
   behaviour as an allegory of greed.   
      
   I don't think the author intended it as an allegory, and the author   
   who wrote it down was probably passing on a story that had been handed   
   down orally for several generations, and gave it his own moral   
   interpretation, which centred on the concept of cherem.   
      
   That concept made little sense to a coloured community in Windhoek in   
   1970, so the preacher gave it a different interpretation, with a   
   different moral lesson, and I believe the method he used was   
   allrgorical, treating people and events in a story as personifications   
   of moral qualities.   
      
   Miller is, of course, talking about stories that were self-consciously   
   composed as allegories.   
      
   So I think that using the metaphor of a vine to represent the spread   
   of a group of people is not allegory, but using a story of people to   
   represent moral qualities is allegory.   
      
      
      
   >   
   >>> ....   
   >>>   
   >>> See also /Encountering Sorrow/ (/Li Sao/, I'm told), a Chinese classic   
   >>> of the third century B.C., I'm told.   
   >>   
   >> _Departing_ Sorrow.  Not an allegory by the above definition   
   >> either, it seems.  (Not enough of a narrative to be a fiction.)   
   >   
   >I've just glanced at a translation of it, but I don't think fiction   
   >needs narrative.  A mere description of something that doesn't exist,   
   >such as Coleridge's "Xanadu", qualifies as fiction.  If the consort   
   >being rejected by the ruler stands for an official being rejected by the   
   >ruler, I'd say that counts as allegory.   
   >   
   >>      -----     -----   
   >>   
   >> Back to Laura Miller's article.  I find it annoying that she   
   >> spent three paragraphs complaining about misuses before explaining   
   >> why she considered them misuses.  She gave a short definition,   
   >> one example, and then switched quickly to complaining about   
   >> the form being neglected.  It is pretty bad expository writing.   
   >>   
   >> I get the impression that to her, an allegory must be a fiction   
   >> with a undisguised (or crudely disguised) metaphor, and that   
   >> the metaphor must be about an abstract theme that has enough   
   >> gravitas (for her).   
   >   
   >I think for her it has to be based on representation.  People and places   
   >in the fiction represent those abstract ideas.   
      
   --   
   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)