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ALLEGORY IN ENGLISH LITERATURE AND
THE NÄYADHAMMA KAHÃO
V. M. DOSHI, Ahmedabad.
The origin of allegory should be traced back to philosophy and theology rather than literature. Most probably it lies in religion. From the beginning allegory has been closely asscciated with story.
We can distinguish between two kinds of stories : those which are essentially literal and those which are essentially symbolic and cannot be comprehended unless we understand their symbols. A literal story may have symbols in it but we can understand it without their presence because the story's meaning and effect will depend primarily on its development of a situation. But in some stories symbol is the primary method of communication, and without a translation of its symbols, the story will be meaningless.
Stories that operate primarily on a symbolic level can further be classified into allegorical and symbolic categories. The distinction between these two is that symbolism always means what it says and also something else while allegory primarily means something else. We can say that allegory begins with an idea and the author then creates an object (frequently a character) that stands for that idea. A story like the Pilgrim's Progress where Vanity Fair is chosen simply to represent an abstract idea, not to be taken on a literal level as an actual place, is an allegory.
An allegory is a coherent structure in which all the elements are carefully integrated in a pattern of thought, and the effectiveness of an allegorical scheme depends upon the systematizing process. The symbolist moves from the actual to the unseen and
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