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48
Allegory in the English Literature
to the six days of creation out of the seven days of the first week followed by the Sabbath of external rest. It is interesting to compare this Christian belief of six ages with the Jain conception of six ārās, spokes of the wheel of time.
John uses the number seven as a symbol for completeness or wholeness. Seven days makes a week. The seven days of the week are connected with the seven planets readily visible to the naked eye.
Twenty four is the most conspicuous number in the description. of the heavenly throne and its setting which forms chapter IV. Twenty four elders are seated about the throne. The Jain conception of 24 Tirthankaras is by far the older. This tradition of numerical allegory continued through the middle ages into the Renaissance, and is particularly well examplified in the poetry of Edmund Spenser (1552-99).
Allegory and satire are in fact intimately connected. Allegory is general and satire is particular. The generalities of allegory acquire power over the moral sense and the imagination by way of their relevance to the particular, and the particularities of satire equally acquire more than passing relevance when they are seen in terms of a system of moral ideas which are generally acceptable.
The description of Vanity Fair, for example, in the Pilgrim's Progress obviously and powerfully appeals to the satiric imagination of Thackeray. The basic structure of Gulliver's Travels is allegorical; the island of pigmies, the island of giants, the flying island and the island of rational horses are all allegories of aspects of the human condition which might perfectly well have found their way into an avowedly allegorical medieval or renaissance
narrative.
Satire criticizes social, political or religious life with a view reforming it while allegory aims at moral or religious
edification.
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