ALL LEG GORY

[taimatsu]

I may be mildly sleep-deprived. I have acquired further supplies of chocolate/juice/pasta/cocktail sausages om yom yom.

I am working on an essay analysing George Hebert's poem The Pilgrimage. I'm looking at the image of the pilgrim/life's journey in this and other lyric poems dated 1340-1650.

I do know what an allegory is. The problem I'm having is the difference between an allegory like one of Jesus' parables (A woman loses a coin in a dark part of her house...) and an allegory like this poem or Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress. In the first one, the story itself is self-contained and may seem a bit pointless, until Jesus/whoever says 'Aha! The woman is like... and the coin is like... and...' and gives the key to the symbols. In Bunyan or here in Herbert at least half the symbol-keys are right out there in the open - "the Slough of Despond," "the rock of Pride," "Fancy's meadow." If they were saying 'Chappie goes on a trip, leaves city, climbs hills, gets held up in a pretty meadow, meets a man who gives bad advice, eventually reached beautiful city,' I'd get my head round this easily, but I'm confused as to whether it really counts if you put a whole lot of EVERYMAN! PRIDE! WORLDLY WISEMAN! ANGEL! in there.

Talk to me, Englishy people! (note I haven't actually read the Bunyan so don't refer too closely to it in explaining things!)

Comments

[beingjdc.livejournal.com]

There's definitely a difference. My third form RE exam revolved largely around a list of bible passages, and saying which ones were parables and which ones were allegories. I think an allegory is likely to be shorter, and more likely to be outright symbolic rather than directly illustrative. This is, however, a not very useful answer to a question which only tangentially resembles the one you asked.

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

Hmm, I'm not sure that's right. I think parable is a sub-division of allegory, not a separate mode. (Or maybe RE usage differs functionally from English usage!)

Allegory in general just means that the text is to be read at some symbolic level rather than literally. So a parable is an allegorical story representing a religious or moral lesson.

As for taimatsu's question though, my feeling is that they are just different styles of allegorizing. There are probably different technical terms applicable to the styles, and if so, unhelpfully I don't know them.

[beingjdc.livejournal.com]

Deeply unhelpful suggestion of the difference here
http://www.bible.ca/d-parables-of-jesus.htm

There's some content at wikipedia also.

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

"An allegory transfers the properties of one thing to another: Parables compare two separate things to one another."

Heh, that may go down a storm in Canadian Bible studies, but I don't think it's going to cut much ice with taimatsu's tutors!

[thinkstoomuch.livejournal.com]

Might that mean that an allegory is a metaphor, while parables are similes?