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V. M. Doshi
Unlike symbolism which is a mode of thought, allegory is a mode of expression. It belongs to the form of literature more than to its content and it is learnt from the practice of the ancients.
In many of Blake's poems allegory and satire are present together :
I wander thro' each charter'd street,
Near where the charter'd Thames does flow
And mark in every face I meet
Marks of weakness, marks of woe.
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"London" here is both the allegory of a state of mind and an actual city whose way of life totally offended Blake's religious principle.
The thematic content of allegory with detailed richness of stylized point of view of good satire expressed in story-form produces potential literature. The Pilgrim's Progress, the Life and Death of Mr. Badman, and Gulliver's Travels, for example, mark important stages in the development of the English novel. The methods used by Bunyan and Swift and taken up by Fielding in Tom Jones and later by Jane Austen in the novels-Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, Persuasion etc. recall the allegorical interludes of the sixteenth century. It is noticeable that the American novel as exemplified by the work of Hawthrone and Melville, retained and developed this allegorical structure. The structure of the morlity play, with its frequent satiric and realistic overtones and the general allegorical ambience of so many of the plays of Marlowe, Shakespeare and Jonson, is perhaps the greatest single contribution of allegory to the literature of England.
In Jain literature the tradition of allegory is as old as the Agamas. The Nayādhammukahāo, which is the most readable of all the Jain canonical works, is a collection of stories with various illustrations and tales tinged with religious sermonizing. Most of the tales lay more stress on some parable incorporated in them
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