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Allegorical   /ˌæləgˈɔrəkəl/   Listen
Allegorical

adjective
1.
Used in or characteristic of or containing allegory.  Synonym: allegoric.  "An allegorical painting of Victory leading an army"






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Allegorical" Quotes from Famous Books



... possession of an enormous key—such a one as is sometimes seen in those allegorical representations where the vanquished offer the keys of their cities to the conquerors. Although Rudolph believed himself sufficiently changed by years not to be recognized by Polidori, he yet pulled up the collar of his coat before passing the ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue

... verse, by Mr. Rogers, of an ice-house, in which winter is described as a captive, &c., which is memorable on this account, that a brother poet, on reading the passage, mistook it, (from not understanding the allegorical expressions,) either sincerely or maliciously, for a description of the house-dog. Now, this little anecdote seems to embody the poor Sibyl's history,—from a stern icy sovereign, with a petrific mace, she lapsed ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey

... slave, "O I'm free!" The stage is suddenly lighted up in a gorgeous manner. The obedient slave and his dear Julia continue kneeling. The dead mariner blesses them. The Goddess of Liberty appears again—this time in a beaver overcoat—and pours some more incense on the obedient slave. An allegorical picture of Virtue appears in a red vest and military boots, on the left proscenium, John Brown the barber appears as Lady Macbeth, and says there is a blue tinge into his nails, and consequently he is an Octoroon. Another actor wants ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 1 • Charles Farrar Browne

... stately dining-room—Henri II., with a historic mantel taken from the palace of Fontainebleau, and four great allegorical paintings of Morning, Evening, Noon, and Midnight upon the walls. There were no other guests—the table, set for six, seemed like a toy in the vast apartment. And in a sudden flash—with a start of almost terror—Montague realized what it must mean not to be in Society. To have all this splendour, ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair

... old warrior alluded was in no degree diminished by his allegorical speech; for the blushes of the maiden who listened covered her burning cheeks till her dark eyes seemed to glow with their reflection; but, after struggling a moment with shame, she laughed, as if unwilling to understand him seriously, ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper

... Sparsit was not a poetical woman; but she took an idea in the nature of an allegorical fancy, into her head. Much watching of Louisa, and much consequent observation of her impenetrable demeanour, which keenly whetted and sharpened Mrs. Sparsit's edge, must have given her as it were a lift, in the way of inspiration. ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*

... the highest works in point of genius and one of the most curious as illustrating manners and opinions. The poet supposes himself falling asleep on Malvern Hills, and in his vision he describes the vices of the times in an allegorical form, which has been compared to "The Pilgrim's Progress." The poetical vigor ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta

... the authority of the senate. The prevailing sect of the new Platonicians judged it prudent to connect themselves with the priests, whom perhaps they despised, against the Christians, whom they had reason to fear. These fashionable Philosophers prosecuted the design of extracting allegorical wisdom from the fictions of the Greek poets; instituted mysterious rites of devotion for the use of their chosen disciples; recommended the worship of the ancient gods as the emblems or ministers of the Supreme Deity, and composed against the faith of the gospel many elaborate treatises, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon

... ornamented with forty-four columns, and rising at its extreme point to the height of sixty-six feet. The sculpture which decorates the tympanum of the portico is the work of Sir Richard Westmacott, and is an allegorical representation of the progress of civilisation. The spiritual influences that have successively worked upon the savage natures of the dark ages, have here distinct types. Religion tames the savage; Paganism makes him a crouching ...
— How to See the British Museum in Four Visits • W. Blanchard Jerrold

... ended, the gate of the church opened; the crowd gave way on either side, and, preceded by three of the young nobles of the inferior order, bearing standards of allegorical design, depicting the triumph of Liberty, Justice, and Concord, forth issued Rienzi, clad in complete armour, the helmet alone excepted. His face was pale with watching and intense excitement—but stern, grave, ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... the characters of old romance, is "merely the Dawn," or Light, or some other bright being carried away by Paris, who represents Night, or Winter, or the Cloud, or some other power of darkness. Without discussing these ideas, it may be said that the Greek poets (at all events before allegorical explanations of mythology came in, about five hundred years before Christ) regarded Helen simply as a woman of wonderful beauty. Homer was not thinking of the Dawn, or the Cloud when he described Helen among the Elders on the Ilian walls, or repeated her lament over the ...
— Helen of Troy • Andrew Lang

... "Yes, perhaps he's something allegorical. A sort of pageant. Good Luck or something. It's not quite the sort of thing I expected, I ...
— More William • Richmal Crompton

... main door is a beautiful marble statue purchased by Edison at the Paris Exposition in 1889, on the occasion of his visit there. The statue, mounted on a base three feet high, is an allegorical representation of the supremacy of electric light over all other forms of illumination, carried out by the life-size figure of a youth with half-spread wings seated upon the ruins of a street gas-lamp, holding triumphantly ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin

... series of allegorical pictures by an old master in the Baptistery at Florence, how, with the divine instinct of poets and artists, in the beautiful symbolic figure of Hope, the painter has placed a lily in her hands. Cannot we teach our sons that if they are ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins

... company with Fraud and Mischief. Then we have the genealogy of Wit and Learning, and of Satire, the Son of Wit and Malice, and an account of their various quarrels, and the decision of Jupiter. Neither are the histories of such semi-allegorical personages as Almamoulin, the son of Nouradin, or of Anningait and Ayut, the Greenland lovers, much more refreshing to modern readers. That Johnson possessed humour of no mean order, we know from Boswell; but no critic could have divined his power from the clumsy gambols in which he occasionally ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen

... comes to her husband's house, she finds at the door a broom; or, if he takes possession of her's, a ploughshare is placed there: both allegorical of their duties. The distaff of the bride is carried by an old woman throughout ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello

... also in trochaics, each stanza having a single rhyme. The poet describes in enigmatic language the obsequies of the Phoenix and the Turtle-dove, who had been united in life by the ties of a purely spiritual love. The poem may be a mere play of fancy without recondite intention, or it may be of allegorical import; but whether it bear relation to pending ecclesiastical, political, or metaphysical controversy, or whether it interpret popular grief for the death of some leaders of contemporary society, is not easily determined. ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee

... iii., p. 203.).—The allusions in Hall's poem, stanzas iii. & v., refer to the fine allegorical description of human decrepitude in Ecclesiastes, xii. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 74, March 29, 1851 • Various

... broke in, laughing, for I took the drift of her meaning, and was wishful to prove myself alert. "Most allegorical lady," I protested, "I take you very clearly when you explain your own fable." And I rubbed my hands, instantly pleased with myself ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy

... and the elders; the other, which represents a Saracen with a European female between him and a Christian soldier, is, perhaps, an ecclesiastical allegory, descriptive of the Saracen and the Christian warrior contending for the liberation of the Church. These sort of allegorical stories were common among monastic ornaments, and the famous legend of St George and the ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt

... this Etruscan tomb stands a fine bronze allegorical group—the Goddess of Victory in her car, drawn by prancing horses—fitting memorial to this ...
— Denmark • M. Pearson Thomson

... at top and at bottom of the principal subject, there is a running allegorical ornament, of which I will not incur the presumption to suppose myself a successful interpreter. The constellations, and the symbols of agriculture and of a rural occupation form the chief subjects of this running ornament. All the inscriptions ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various

... will, like the Bethany home, be redolent with the ointment perfume. A holy life is a silent witness for Jesus—an incense-cloud from the heart-altar, breathing odours and sweet spices, of which the world cannot fail to take knowledge. Yes! were we to seek for a beautiful allegorical representation of pure and undefiled Religion, we would find it in this loveliest of inspired pictures. Mary—all silent and submissive at the feet of her Lord—only permitting her love to be disclosed by the holy perfume ...
— Memories of Bethany • John Ross Macduff

... at Green Street. Winifred had gone with Imogen to see a play which some said was allegorical, and others "very exciting, don't you know." It was because of what others said that Winifred and Imogen had gone. Fleur went on to Paddington. Through the carriage the air from the brick-kilns of West Drayton and the late hayfields fanned her still gushed cheeks. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... author, taken literally, compared with some other passage in his writings, admitted to be authentic, involve a palpable contradiction, it hath been the custom of the ingenuous commentator to smooth the difficulty by the supposition that in the one case an allegorical or tropical sense was chiefly intended. So by the word 'native' I may be supposed to mean a town where I might have been born,—or where it might be desirable that I should have been born, as being situate in wholesome air, upon a dry, chalky soil, in which I delight,—or a town with the inhabitants ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various

... generally been regarded as an allegorical poem; the Jews interpreted it as setting forth the love of Jehovah for Israel; the Christian interpreters have made it the representation of the love of Christ for his Church. These are the two principal theories, ...
— Who Wrote the Bible? • Washington Gladden

... of the time in the rooms downstairs, and part out of doors in the great square which is formed by the three sides of the house, and by the lofty iron railings and gates which protect it in front. A large circular fish-pond with stone sides, and an allegorical leaden monster in the middle, occupies the centre of the square. The pond itself is full of gold and silver fish, and is encircled by a broad belt of the softest turf I ever walked on. I loitered here ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins

... be a scene of horrible famine, where hungry dogs, and even wolves, put an end to the miseries of starving, homeless children of slaughtered parents; another, the people would be gazing at royal banquets, lasting a whole day, with allegorical "subtleties" of jelly on the table, and pageants coming between the courses, where all the Virtues harangued in turn, or where knights delivered maidens from giants and "salvage men." In the south there was less ...
— History of France • Charlotte M. Yonge

... to the Freudian dream-analysis consists in subjecting the literal implications of the established Freudian symbols, such as snakes and staircases, to a further, more allegorical mode of treatment in which the sexual meaning is greatly altered. The evidence, which Freudians continually find in dreams, for a pre-occupation concerning infantile and sexual needs[10] is explained away, as merely incidental reviewing ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10

... or animal subtlety. Jesus 564:27 said, quoting a line from the Psalms, "They hated me without a cause." The serpent is perpetually close upon the heel of harmony. From the beginning 564:30 to the end, the serpent pursues with hatred the spiritual idea. In Genesis, this allegorical, talking serpent typi- fies mortal mind, "more subtle than any beast of the 565:1 field." In the Apocalypse, when nearing its doom, this evil increases and becomes the great red dragon, swollen 565:3 ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy

... to many emperors and kings,' replied the Professor, and I saw him smile diplomatically as he moved his spectacles to get a better view of the allegorical canvas on the left wall that exhibits the nude figure of the famous ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw

... Fathers wrote in Greek and used the word stauros, or wrote in Latin and translated that word as crux, they often seem to have had in their mind's eye a tree; a tree which moreover was closely connected in meaning with the forbidden tree of the Garden of Eden, an allegorical figure of undoubtedly phallic signification which had its counterpart in the Tree of the Hesperides, from which the Sun-God Hercules after killing the Serpent was fabled to have picked the Golden Apples of Love, one of which ...
— The Non-Christian Cross - An Enquiry Into the Origin and History of the Symbol Eventually Adopted as That of Our Religion • John Denham Parsons

... their dying" (p. 56.). Sir Walter Scott quotes a curious tract in Woodstock, entitled Vindication of the Book of Common Prayer against the Contumelious Slanders of the Fanatic Party terming it "Porridge." The author of this singular and rare tract (says Sir W.) indulges in the allegorical style, till he fairly hunts down the allegory. The learned divine chases his metaphor at a very cold scent, through a pamphlet of his mortal quarto pages.—See a Parallel of the Liturgy with the Mass Book, Breviary, &c., by ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 212, November 19, 1853 • Various

... wooden beams, and on the whitewashed walls scribbled legends proclaiming that Private John Johnson was a bastard; or that a certain battalion was a rabble of ruffians; or that Kaiser Bill would die on the gallows, illustrating those remarks with portraits and allegorical devices, sketchily drawn, ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs

... it, I played the villain's part. In doing so I was at times necessarily "ugly," and therefore to some unpopular. I confess I felt it my duty not to shrink from being "ugly," although whenever I could I introduced some redeeming element into my designs—the figure of a girl, allegorical of Parliament or whatever the "ugly" subject might happen to be—but in some of my Punch drawings this relief was impossible. For instance, the series of "Puzzle Heads," in each of which a portrait of the celebrity is built up of personal attributes, characteristics, or incidents ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss

... invincible in war! Fulfil our vows in battle, fight for us! None can resist thee; give us superiority! O Soma immortal! May we drink to thee and be immortal like thee!' Mr. Baring-Gould says that the whole legend of Soma is but the allegorical history of the plant Sarcostemma viminalis, which is associated with passionate love 'because of the intoxicating liquor which is derived from its juice. It is regarded as a godsend. The way in which it is prepared is by crushing it in a mortar; the juice is ...
— Storyology - Essays in Folk-Lore, Sea-Lore, and Plant-Lore • Benjamin Taylor

... According to Littre it is a 'figure or image used as a sign of something else;' and we Catholics narrow the definition by saying with Hugues de Saint Victor that a symbol is an allegorical representation of a Christian principle ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans

... one bundle with religion, as they knew religion, they disowned religion at the same time. Others who accepted its authority but were unsatisfied with current interpretations of it sought escape in allegorical uses of it. (We shall find this to be one of the distinct elements in Christian Science.) But after all it did answer the insistent questions, Whence? and Whither? and Why? as nothing else answered them. Therefore, in spite ...
— Modern Religious Cults and Movements • Gaius Glenn Atkins

... because of the justice of God; knowledge, virtue, and faith lead, through God's grace and mercy manifested in Christ, to a perpetual union with Him. Hell, purgatory, and paradise give place and setting to the events of the drama. But the deeper meaning of the poem is allegorical. In a letter quoted ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry

... ago a salle de spectacle "en verdure" still existed in the park—the seats were all in grass; the coulisses (side scenes) made in the trees of the park—their boughs cut and trained into shape, to represent green walls, a marble group of allegorical figures at the back. It was most carefully preserved—the seats of the amphitheatre looked like green velvet and the trees were always cut in the same curious shapes. It seemed quite a fitting part of the fine old place, with its memories of past fetes ...
— Chateau and Country Life in France • Mary King Waddington

... His executorial proceedings. Eleven posthumous letters of the lady. Copy of one of them written to himself. Tells Lovelace of one written to him, in pursuance of her promise in her allegorical letter. (See Letter XVIII. of Vol. VIII.) Other executorial proceedings. The Colonel's letter to James Harlowe, signifying Clarissa's request to be buried at the feet of ...
— Clarissa Harlowe, Volume 9 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson

... sexuality distinguishes the Japanese demonology. Here the physical replaces the philosophical; instead of principles we find allegorical personages, but they show just the same pleasing propensity to ...
— The Soul of the Far East • Percival Lowell

... by a gravel path, carefully raked and bordered by orange trees in tubs. In the middle was the bronze statue of some unknown Grand Duke in the costume of Louis Philippe, on a pediment adorned at the four corners by allegorical figures representing the Virtues. On a seat one solitary man was dozing over his paper. Behind the silly moat of the earthworks of the Palace two sleepy cannon yawned upon the sleepy town. Christophe laughed at the ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland

... supernatural in Christianity (forming the bulk of its history) to be illusion, or that which declares it myth,—the conclusions can be made out only by a system of interpretation which can be compared to nothing but the wildest dreams and allegorical systems of some of the early Fathers; while the results themselves are either those elementary principles of ethics for which there was no need to invoke a revelation at all, or some mystico-metaphysical ...
— Reason and Faith; Their Claims and Conflicts • Henry Rogers

... only totally or collectively, but distributively in clauses and words, infinite springs and streams of doctrine to water the Church in every part. And therefore as the literal sense is, as it were, the main stream or river, so the moral sense chiefly, and sometimes the allegorical or typical, are they whereof the Church hath most use; not that I wish men to be bold in allegories, or indulgent or light in allusions: but that I do much condemn that interpretation of the Scripture which is only after the manner as men use to ...
— The Advancement of Learning • Francis Bacon

... God,' he said, 'that ye take my words as other than allegorical. The lady Katharine may be spoken of as a king's mistress since in truth she were a fit mistress for a king, being fair, devout, learned, courteous, tall and sweet-voiced. But that she hath been kind to the King, God forbid that I ...
— Privy Seal - His Last Venture • Ford Madox Ford

... between them. The two men were born to it. Sam's art took the lucrative shape of portrait-painting; Will's the side of flower and fruit and landscape painting, which was vilely unremunerative then, and allegorical painting, which no one will be at the pains to understand, or, what is more to the purpose, to buy, in this enlightened nineteenth century. Sam, who was thriving already, fell in love with Clarissa Gage, with her six thousand pounds fortune: there was no ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler

... Confusion was nothing but a Breach among the Undertakers and Directors of the Work, and that the Building was design'd chiefly for a Store-house for Provisions, in Case of a second Deluge; as to their Notion of its reaching up to Heaven, he takes the Expression to be allegorical rather than little, and only to mean that it should be exceeding high; perhaps they might not be Astronomers enough to measure the Distance of Space between the Earth and Heaven, as we pretend to do now; but as Noah was then alive, ...
— The History of the Devil - As Well Ancient as Modern: In Two Parts • Daniel Defoe

... by some Masons of strong powers of imagination that they take their origin from the Eleusinian Mysteries. These were pagan orgies attached to some Grecian temples. Surrounded by mysterious ceremonies and symbols, and supported by every mythical and allegorical illusion that could inspire awe or confidence, these mysteries were ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly

... coloured glass, it would still have been unsatisfactory.[952] As it is, the dull stains and enamels employed by Jarvis give it what Horace Walpole called 'a washed-out' effect. Reynolds has introduced into it likenesses both of himself and Jarvis, as shepherds worshipping. Of the allegorical figures beneath, Hartley Coleridge justly remarks that personifications which are nowhere found in Scripture are not well adapted for a ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton

... an evil being was allowed, who, in the allegorical language of scripture, went about seeking whom he should devour, he could not more effectually degrade the human character than by giving a ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]

... thoughtless Italians, and they required the portraiture to be rendered in a manner that should induce no memory of death. The statue rose up, and presented itself in front of the tomb, like an actor upon a stage, surrounded now not merely, or not at all, by the Virtues, but by allegorical figures of Fame and Victory, by genii and muses, by personifications of humbled kingdoms and adoring nations, and by every circumstance of pomp, and symbol of adulation, that flattery could ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin

... through the living rock. These walls covered with hieroglyphics and paintings of allegorical processions, might well have occupied thousands of arms for thousands of years in their formation. These corridors of interminable length opened into square chambers, in the midst of which pits had been contrived, through ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various

... throne in the accoutrements of Mars, with a gallant wig flowing in mazy ringlets from under the helmet upon his plated shoulders; overhead, upon a canopy of cloud, reclines a breezy assemblage of allegorical females—Truth, Mercy, Fame with her trumpet, and so forth. His nervous clean-shaven features do not wear the traditional smile; they are thoughtful, almost grim. On his left is portrayed a huge CANNON astride of which can be seen a chubby angel; the Duke's hand reposes, in a paternal ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas

... certain time set aside for occupying oneself with Divine things is the matter of a moral precept. But, in so far as this precept specializes the time as a sign representing the Creation of the world, it is a ceremonial precept. Again, it is a ceremonial precept in its allegorical signification, as representative of Christ's rest in the tomb on the seventh day: also in its moral signification, as representing cessation from all sinful acts, and the mind's rest in God, in which sense, too, it is a general ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas

... windows with portraits of sovereigns, these windows being lighted at night from the outside. The room is ninety-one feet long, and at each end has three frescoed archways representing religious and allegorical subjects. Niches in the walls contain statues of the barons who compelled King John to sign Magna Charta. There are heraldic devices on the ceilings and walls, and the throne stands at the southern end. The "Woolsack," where sits the lord chancellor, ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook

... wrath, were seen to be involved in motions far beyond the pale of man's welfare, and, therefore, the millennial change was confined to the limits of our planet. Losing more and more of its original form as an attempted explanation of natural phenomena, the myth now exists in civilized nations as an allegorical type of man's own history and destiny, and thus is slowly merging into an episode of the second great cycle of the mythus, that of the Paradise lost and regained. It, too, finds its ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton

... strange utterances in the Rabbinical literature which imply a belief in the potency of the stars at a man's nativity, but no one is justified in surrendering his own rational opinions because this or that sage erred, or because an allegorical remark is expressed literally. A man must never cast his own judgment behind him; the eyes are set in ...
— Old-Time Makers of Medicine • James J. Walsh

... the wave! And such an appeal he always makes. His subject may be fanciful, as in the "Realm of Venus" (the "Spring"); religious, as in the Sixtine Chapel frescoes or in the "Coronation of the Virgin"; political, as in the recently discovered "Pallas Taming a Centaur"; or even crudely allegorical, as in the Louvre frescoes,—no matter how unpropitious, how abstract the idea, the vivid appeal to our tactile sense, the life-communicating movement is always there. Indeed, at times it seems ...
— The Florentine Painters of the Renaissance - With An Index To Their Works • Bernhard Berenson

... with the two beautiful nymphs in the foreground, is a splendid picture. Titian's Sacred and Profane Love puzzles me completely: I neither understand the name nor the intention of the picture. It is evidently allegorical: but an allegory very clumsily expressed. The aspect of Sacred Love would answer just as well for Profane Love. What is that little cupid about, who is groping in the cistern behind? why does Profane Love wear gloves? ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson

... meet of the temptations of St. Anthony were rather a sort of odd, wild grotesques, than any thing capable of producing a serious passion. In all these subjects poetry is very happy. Its apparitions, its chimeras, its harpies, its allegorical figures, are grand and affecting; and though Virgil's Fame and Homer's Discord are obscure, they are magnificent figures. These figures in painting would be clear enough, but I fear they ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... disguised as postilions at a funeral, with formidable false noses, rose-colored crape hat-bands and large favors of roses and crape bows at their buttonholes, rode before the vehicle. Upon the platform of the car were groups of allegorical personages, representing WINE, PLEASURE, LOVE, PLAY. The mission of these symbolical beings was, by means of jokes, sarcasms, and mockeries, to plague the life out of Goodman Cholera, a sort of funeral and burlesque Cassander, whom they ridiculed and made game of in ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue

... allegorical. In the character of a song-bird the bard relates the circumstances of his nativity, the simple habits of his progenitors, and his own rural tastes and recreations from infancy, giving the first place ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume IV. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... not great: twelve or fifteen hundred lines must cover the whole of it. The form is not new, being merely the seven-line stanza already familiar in Chaucer. The arrangement is in no way novel, combining as it does the allegorical presentment of embodied virtues, vices, and qualities with the melancholy narrative common in poets for many years before. But the poetical value of the whole is extraordinary. The two constituents of that value, the formal and the material, are represented with a singular equality of development. ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury

... adorned—or rather disfigured the walls. Vulgar photographs and prints were to be seen on all sides. Mingled with these cheap creations were excellent copies of famous Madonnas, quaint Scriptural drawings, engravings of the Saviour, and an allegorical coloured print which emphasised the joys of heaven. There was also a badly drawn but idealised portrait of Droom, done in crayon at the age of twenty. This portrait was one of his prized possessions. He loved it best because ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon

... is a recess a few feet long and a few inches wide, and over it hangs the finest kakemono that the house can afford, and in front of it is a vase whose flowers are arranged in a traditional form which has a certain allegorical meaning. ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Japan • John Finnemore

... from the relative position of the lampoon to that of polished satire—swaying parties and peoples, too, and challenging comparison with the higher (at times it might almost be said the highest) efforts of literature in that direction. The beauty and statuesque qualities of his allegorical figures, the dignity of his beasts, and the earnestness and directness of his designs, apart from the exquisite simplicity of his work at its best, are things previously unknown in the art of which he is the most accomplished ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann

... name shows, Surya is the spirit of the sun. We hear a good deal about him in the Rig-veda, but the whole of it is merely description of the power of the sun in the order of nature, partly allegorical, and partly literal. He is only a nature-power, not a personal god. The case is not quite so clear with Savita, whose name seems to mean literally "stimulator," "one who stirs up." On the whole it seems most likely that he represents the sun, as the vivifying power in nature, ...
— Hindu Gods And Heroes - Studies in the History of the Religion of India • Lionel D. Barnett

... these great dramatists, so intimately associated in their lives and in their writings, could hardly be separated in any commemoration. They are accordingly here represented, not only in adjacent windows, but combined by allegorical allusion in the first. The design portrays David and Jonathan, with an inscription from the opening verse of Psalm CXXXII (Vulgate): "Ecce quam bonum, et jucundum: ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: Southwark Cathedral • George Worley

... prevailed on the Reverend Mother to celebrate the saint's day by a masked ball, and the whole convent was engrossed in the invention of whimsical disguises. The nuns indeed were not to take part in the ball; but a number of them were to appear in an allegorical entertainment with which the evening was to open. The new Papal Nuncio, who was lately arrived in Venice, had promised to be present; and as he was known to be a man of pleasure there was scarce a sister in the convent but had ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton

... before which is placed a monumental bishop's throne, with elaborate armorial embellishments. A Renaissance tomb of the sixteenth century, by a pupil of Michel Colomb, now much injured in its sculptured details of angels and allegorical figures, is locally considered the "show-piece" of ...
— The Cathedrals of Northern France • Francis Miltoun

... was telling a true story and not some allegorical fantasy—these people who had built this place had been a race who knew the secrets of life so intimately they could manipulate the unborn child into shapes intended to give it powers and physical attributes fitting ...
— Valley of the Croen • Lee Tarbell

... Newburyport, and proceeded to embellish and furnish it according to the dictates of his taste and fancy. In the grounds about his house, he caused to be erected between forty and fifty wooden statues of great men and allegorical figures, together with four lions and one lamb. Among these images were two statues of Dexter himself, one of which held a label with a characteristic inscription. His house was ornamented with minarets, adorned ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... language of this mele is allegorical, a rope whose strands are inwrought with passion, envy, detraction, and abuse. In translating it one has to choose between the poetic verbal garb and the esoteric meaning which the bard made to ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson

... itself consciously the object; they deal with concrete facts, with the delight of sport or rustic amusements: and they embody their feelings in the old conventions; they converse with imaginary shepherds: with Robin Hood or allegorical knights in romantic forests, who represent a love of nature but introduce description only as a set-off to the actors in masques or festivals. In Pope's time we have the abstract or metaphysical deity Nature, who can be worshipped with a distinct appreciation. The conventions have become ...
— English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century • Leslie Stephen

... had planned some fragments were issued after his death. The poem is a combination of allegory and romance; and in this prefatory letter to Raleigh the poet himself explains the plan of the work and its main allegorical signification.] ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot

... which readily lends itself to an allegorical interpretation. For such an interpretation, the reader is referred to Mrs. Owen's paper, read before the Browning Society of London, and contained in the Society's Papers, Part IV., pp. 49* et seq. It is too long ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson

... to reconcile the human story with the allegory, and in consequence the issues are confusedly presented to our mind." It is characteristic of the Morte d'Arthur fragment that it is apparently free from all allegorical intention. It is merely a moving human story with a fascinating element of mystery inspired by the original Celtic legend. An element of allegory lies in the epilogue, and The Passing of Arthur still further enforces the allegorical purpose. But here, as Mr. Brooke again writes ...
— Selections from Wordsworth and Tennyson • William Wordsworth and Alfred Lord Tennyson

... them; and at length, in the fine country which they occupied, they became a flourishing nation.(50) Wilford relates that there is a sect of Hindoos who, attempting to reconcile the two systems, declare in their allegorical style that "Parvati and Mahadeva found their concurrence essential to the perfection of their offspring, and that Vishnu, at the request of the goddess, effected ...
— The God-Idea of the Ancients - or Sex in Religion • Eliza Burt Gamble

... with pieces of flower-pots and strewn over with sand; quite at the top they had stuck up half a beer bottle, with the neck upwards, and that was not at all allegorical. ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen

... each leaf and twig groomed meticulously into its precise place in a fantastic geometrical scheme. Just inside this boundary there stood a ring of statues of heroic size. Some of them were single figures of men and women; some were busts; some were groups in natural or allegorical poses—all were done with consummate skill and feeling. Between the statues there were fountains, magnificent bronze and glass groups of the strange aquatic denizens of this strange planet, bathed in geometrically shaped sprays, screens, ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith

... and the mass of mixed learning within his reach are accepted as the consolation of his human griefs; he is filled with the passion of universal knowledge, and the desire to communicate it. Philosophy has become the lady of his soul—to write allegorical poems in her honor, and to comment on them with all the apparatus of his learning in prose, his mode of celebrating her. Further, he marries; it is said, not happily. The antiquaries, too, have disturbed romance by discovering ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... incredible to the reader that I marveled much at the hidden meaning of this allegorical speech, and never for one moment supposed it to mean: "I, Dr. Foshay, with my botanic system of medicine, am the biggest humbug in these parts, and if you are going to succeed with me you must be another." But I had already recognized the truth of his last sentence. Probably neither ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb

... it in his dramatic works and that the contemporaries who mention him would not have preserved a profound silence as to his artistic talent[28]; yet Men['e]ndez y Pelayo himself speaks of Vicente's alma de artista[29] and of the plastic character which the most fantastic allegorical figures receive at his hands[30]. If we were assured that the dreamy Bernardim Ribeiro had fashioned the Belem monstrance we might well remain sceptical, but Vicente stands out from among the vaguer poets of Portugal in having, like Garcia de Resende, an ...
— Four Plays of Gil Vicente • Gil Vicente

... over the Ecole de Rome, the Salons, and the Ecole des Beaux Arts. All the same, its ideals are of very mixed origin and very little French. Its principles are the same by which the academic art of nearly all the official schools of Europe is governed. This mythological and allegorical art, guided by dogmas and formulas which are imposed upon all pupils regardless of their temperament, is far more international than national. To an impartial critic this statement will show in an even more curious light the excommunication jealously issued by the academic ...
— The French Impressionists (1860-1900) • Camille Mauclair

... railway station, of which we had already heard so much. This handsome structure, erected by the German Government at an enormous cost, had only been recently opened, and so great was the soreness of feeling excited by certain allegorical bas-reliefs decorating the facade that for many days after the opening of the station police-officers in plain clothes carefully watched the crowd of spectators, carrying off the more seditious ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards

... globe, books, a map of the United States, a square, a compass, etc., emblems of Art, Science, and Education. This piece of plate is eight inches high, six inches wide, and its depth is an inch and a half. The allegorical figures are modeled and finely chased, and the (p. 422) portrait in the ...
— The Medallic History of the United States of America 1776-1876 • J. F. Loubat

... largely to the types popular in the Middle Ages and the comment attached to them was a repetition of timeworn phrases. Alexander Barclay, who is best known as the author of The Ship of Fools, published in 1508, but who also has to his credit several other translations of contemporary moral and allegorical poems from Latin and French and even, in anticipation of the newer era, a version of Sallust's Jugurthine War, offers his translations of The Ship of Fools[301] and of Mancini's Mirror of Good Manners[302] ...
— Early Theories of Translation • Flora Ross Amos

... steep passage came after the steps. The walls were lower, covered with paintings, in which could be made out a series of allegorical scenes, explained, no doubt, by the hieroglyphs inscribed below. This frieze ran all along the passage, and below it were small figures worshipping sacred scarabaei ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier

... had purchased a substantial carriage, built in 1648, ten years after the king's birth. This carriage, or rather house upon wheels, excited the admiration of the whole quarter in which he resided—it was covered with allegorical paintings, and clouds scattered over with stars. The marquise entered this somewhat extraordinary vehicle, sitting opposite the clerk, who endeavored to put his knees out of the way, afraid even of touching the marquise's dress. It was the clerk, too, ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... stamps have allegorical designs. One of the most beautiful examples comes from St. Vincent. Familiar figures to philatelists are those of Peace and Commerce on the stamps of France, Hope with her anchor on the issues of the Cape of ...
— What Philately Teaches • John N. Luff

... doubtless, was the Romaunt of the Rose, an allegorical poem in French, by William de Lorris, continued, after his death in 1260, by Jean de Meun, who figured as a poet in the court of Charles le Bel, of France. This poem, esteemed by the French as the finest of ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee

... established derivation of Aphrodite dia ten tou athrou genesin may be accepted on the authority of Hesiod. Again, there is the name of Pallas, or Athene, which we, who are Athenians, must not forget. Pallas is derived from armed dances—apo tou pallein ta opla. For Athene we must turn to the allegorical interpreters of Homer, who make the name equivalent to theonoe, or possibly the word was originally ethonoe and signified moral intelligence (en ethei noesis). Hephaestus, again, is the lord of light—o tou phaeos istor. This is a good notion; and, to prevent ...
— Cratylus • Plato

... This 'Circe' was allegorical and mythological; it was one of those soulless shows which marked the transition of the Spanish drama from maturity to decay. It is gone and forgotten with thousands of its kind. Calderon will be remembered not as the director ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various

... is all this pother about? For what cause do they embitter their own and other people's lives? That a man should publish three or thirty articles a year, that he should finish or not finish his great allegorical picture, are questions of little interest to the world. The ranks of life are full; and although a thousand fall, there are always some to go into the breach. When they told Joan of Arc[21] she should be at home minding women's work, she answered there were plenty to spin and wash. ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson

... advocated plaster as an occasional substitute for bronze and marble, where elaborate compositions were proposed. He felt capable of achieving so much, his mind teemed with so many panoramic and single conceptions,—historical, allegorical, ideal, and illustrative of standard literature or classical fable,—that only time and expense presented obstacles to unlimited invention. Perhaps no one can conceive this peculiar creativeness of his fancy and aptitude ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various

... the events of an agricultural year. Our classic readers will then comprehend practically how the vulture could feast on the perpetually growing heart of Prometheus—why Tantalus tempted the gods by murdering Pelops—and they will see that the calamities of the Theban race are an allegorical representation of the inevitable fate which awaits a people groaning under the system of taxation now in ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various

... after his recovery, was one day complimenting Dr. Percy on the inestimable service he had done the arts in restoring him to his pencil, in proof of which the artist showed many master-pieces that wanted only the finishing touch, in particular a huge, long-limbed, fantastic, allegorical piece of his own design, which he assured Dr. Percy was the finest example of the beau ideal, ancient or modern, that human genius had ever produced upon canvas. "And what do you think, doctor," said the painter, ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth

... discrepancy between the generally acknowledged purity of character of Florinda and the meaning of La Cava, and it is their opinion that Count Julian's daughter is merely legendary, and that La Cava refers in some allegorical way to the dissolute and voluptuous life which Rodrigo had been leading and which was in itself a good and sufficient reason for all the misfortunes which ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger

... which (besides an allegorical frontispiece representing the power of Venus) there are 124, are oval, measuring five inches in length by three and a half inches in height. The designs appear to me to be very good. On the {89} first plate is the name ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 195, July 23, 1853 • Various

... I am the painter of the allegorical picture of 'The Triumph of Truth' on exhibition down at Yelverton's. I called, major, to make some complaint about the criticism of the work which appeared in your paper. Your critic seems to have misunderstood somewhat the drift of the picture. ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)

... the same in religion. In Italy, as in Hellas, there lies at the foundation of the popular faith the same common treasure of symbolic and allegorical views of nature: on this rests that general analogy between the Roman and the Greek world of gods and of spirits, which was to become of so much importance in later stages of development. In many of their particular conceptions also,—in the already mentioned ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... reader. In the left-hand top corner appears an allegorical female figure of joy, with flowers. The central top space contains the front of Cloisterham Cathedral, or rather, the nave. To the left walks Edwin, with hyacinthine locks, and a thoroughly classical type of face, and Grecian nose. LIKE DATCHERY, ...
— The Puzzle of Dickens's Last Plot • Andrew Lang

... middle of the fire, the only too appropriate melody, "There's nae luck about the house." In the large cloistered court of the present Royal Exchange, the stage of this day's festivities, stands a statue of Queen Victoria. There is an allegorical figure of Commerce on the front of the building. The inscription on the pedestal, selected by Dean Milman, is due to a suggestion of Prince Albert's to the sculptor, Westmacott, that there should be the recognition of a superior Power. The well-chosen words declare "The ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler

... the earth and the tree that has its roots in the earth; but it is a very bad principle if it means that the tree could grow just as well with its roots in the air. Every great literature has always been allegorical—allegorical of some view of the whole universe. The 'Iliad' is only great because all life is a battle, the 'Odyssey' because all life is a journey, the Book of Job because all life is a riddle. There is one attitude ...
— The Defendant • G.K. Chesterton

... Son of God by the demons is an allegory; if the plain declaration of the writer of the first Epistle of John (iii. 8), "To this end was the Son of God manifested, that He might destroy the works of the devil," is allegorical, then the Pauline version of the Fall may be allegorical, and still more the words of consecration of the Eucharist, or the promise of the second coming; in fact, there is not a dogma of ecclesiastical Christianity the scriptural basis of which may not be whittled ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley

... his conclusion, are worth more in my eye than the body of the work. For the object of that seems to be to smother all history under the mantle of allegory. If histories so unlike as those of Hercules and Jesus, can, by a fertile imagination and allegorical interpretations, be brought to the same tally, no line of distinction remains between fact and fancy. As this pithy morsel will not overburthen the mail in passing and repassing between Quincy and Monticello, I send ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... Hitherto everything connected with her change of character had been not only conventional, but had appealed to his aesthetic temperament as singularly beautiful. The quaint garden with its flowers, brook, and allegorical tree were associations that harmonized with Ida's loveliness, while Mr. Eltinge, who had rendered such an immeasurable service to them both, realized his best ideal of dignified ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe

... year and which I can also show you here. This, as you will observe, is 'Paradise Regained,' and I should be very sorry for you if you begin to put on critical airs and try to get some allegory out of it Allegorical pictures are only painted by duffers and bunglers; my picture is not to signify but to be. You perceive how all these varied groups of men and animals and fruits and flowers and stones unite to form one harmonic whole, ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann

... inclusive, deserve special notice, as they show the first beginnings or buddings of a higher dramatic growth, which afterwards resulted in what are called Moral-Plays. For instance, Contemplation, who serves as speaker of prologues, and moralizes the events, is evidently an allegorical personage, that is, an abstract idea personified, such as afterwards grew into general use, and gave character to stage performances. And we have other like personages, Verity, Justice, Mercy, ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson

... shroud the landscape and give the name Haleohu, House-of-mist, to the district, and above all the rainbows so constantly arching over the land, make an appropriate setting for the activities of some family of demigods. Strange and fairylike as much of the incident appears, allegorical as it seems, upon the face of it, the Polynesian mind observes objectively the activities of nature and of man as if they proceeded from the ...
— The Hawaiian Romance Of Laieikawai • Anonymous

... imagine the history of John Bull, and the personages mentioned in it, to be allegorical, which the author would never own. Notwithstanding, to indulge the reader's fancy and curiosity, I have printed at the bottom of the page the supposed allusions of the most obscure parts ...
— The History of John Bull • John Arbuthnot

... unable to eat. Still another explanation is that the whole is part of a dirge, to be taken literally, and describing the mourners in house and garden. I venture, though with some hesitation, to prefer, on the whole, the old allegorical theory, for reasons which it would be impossible to condense here. It is by no means free from difficulty, but is, as I think, less difficult than any of ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... at being cheated. Though the day was a most lovely one, I rode home in fit humor to contrast the system of paganism which Cortez introduced with the more poetical system which preceded it, and to compare these cast-off child's dolls with the allegorical images of the Aztecs. My landlord had two boxes of such images, collected when they were cleaning out one of the old city canals. By way of parlor ornaments, we had an Aztec god of baked earth. He was sitting in a chair; around his navel was coiled ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson

... exercise, moved him to make the Psalms a main object of his sacred studies and meditation. His comments are elegant; though in them he dwells much on the literal sense, he neglects not the mystical and allegorical, every thing in these divine oracles being prophetic, as he takes notice, (in Ps. 142, n. 1.) Often he finds the immediate literal sense clear; in other passages, he shows Christ and his Church to be pointed out. The true sense of the holy scriptures he teaches, only to be opened to us by the ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler

... nearer to the dark shore in successive series of three bounds, each time less energetic than the last. The sky had become much brighter, as it often does toward the close of rainy days, a boundless sky, tinged with the hues of dawn, against which, upon the family tomb of the Moras, four allegorical figures stood forth, imploring, contemplative, pensive, the dying day exaggerating the sublimity of their attitudes. Naught remained of the orations, the perfunctory official condolences. The trampled grass all around, masons occupied in washing the spots of ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet

... energy on pot-boilers which he executed indifferently, because he was bound to please the taste of the vulgar and also because he had no skill to impress trivial things with the seal of genius. He drew little allegorical compositions which his comrade Desmahis engraved cleverly enough in black or in colours and which were bought at a low figure by a print-dealer in the Rue Honore, the citoyen Blaise. But the trade was going from bad to worse, declared Blaise, who for some time ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France

... ghosts, demons, and fairies, good and bad, but "it contains no more than the average Chinese really believes to exist, and his belief in such manifestations is so firm that from the cradle to the grave he lives and moves and has his being in reference to them." Its characters are said to be allegorical, though it may be doubted whether these implications may rightly be read ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner

... upper Circles, is now generally to proceed straight across the lower Circles where Fraud is punished. They had been going to the left at the foot of the precipice, and consequently turn to the right to ascend the bridge. The allegorical intention in the direction of ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 1, Hell [The Inferno] • Dante Alighieri



Words linked to "Allegorical" :   allegoric, allegory, representative



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