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Everything for me becomes allegory. Everything for me becomes allegory.

Charles Baudelaire

mistics and mysticism

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The contrast between Leonardo and Michelangelo is an allegory of the arts of modern times. Leonardo left copious notes of his obse... - MORE The contrast between Leonardo and Michelangelo is an allegory of the arts of modern times. Leonardo left copious notes of his observations on nature and the world around him, but little about his feelings or his inner life. Michelangelo, in his letters, his poetry, in biographies by his friends and students Vasari and Condivi, in conversations with Francisco de Hollanda and others, left us vivid revelations and eloquent chronicles of himself. Leonardo, the self-styled "disciple of experience," was a hero of the effort to re-create the world from the shapes and forms and sensations out there. But Michelangelo, prophet of the sovereign self, found mysterious resources within. These two greatest figures of Italian Renaissance art dramatized a modern movement from craftsman to artist. If Leonardo could be called the Aristotle—practical-minded organizer and surveyor of experience—Michelangelo would be the Plato, seeker after the perfect idea.

Daniel J. Boorstin

Vinci, Leonardo da | Michelangelo

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The stuff of which tragedy and comedy are made is the same stuff. The foibles of mankind work up more easily into comedy than into... - MORE The stuff of which tragedy and comedy are made is the same stuff. The foibles of mankind work up more easily into comedy than into tragedy, and this is the chief difference between the two. We readily understand the Nemesis of temperament, the fatality of character, when it is exposed on a small scale. This is the business of comedy; and we do not here require the labored artifice of gods, mechanical plot, and pointed allegory to make us realize the moral. But in tragedy we have the large scale to deal with. A tragedy is always the same thing. It is a world of complicated and traditional stage devices for making us realize the helplessness of mankind before destiny. We are told from the start to expect the worst: there is going to be suffering, and the suffering is going to be logical, inevitable, necessary. There is also an implication to be conveyed that this suffering is somehow in accord with the moral constitution of the universe.

John Jay Chapman

comedy and comedians | tragedy

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Now an allegory is but a translation of abstract notions into a picture-language, which is itself nothing but an abstraction from ... - MORE Now an allegory is but a translation of abstract notions into a picture-language, which is itself nothing but an abstraction from objects of the senses; the principal being more worthless even than its phantom proxy, both alike unsubstantial, and the former shapeless to boot. On the other hand, a symbol is characterized by a translucence of the special in the individual, or of the general in the special, or of the universal in the general; above all though the translucense of the eternal through and in the temporal. It always partakes of the reality which it renders intelligible; and while it enunciates the whole, abides itself as a living part in that unity of which it is the representative.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

symbolism | allegory

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It is in the nature of allegory, as opposed to symbolism, to beg the question of absolute reality. The allegorist avails himself o... - MORE It is in the nature of allegory, as opposed to symbolism, to beg the question of absolute reality. The allegorist avails himself of a formal correspondence between "ideas" and "things," both of which he assumes as given; he need not inquire whether either sphere is "real" or whether, in the final analysis, reality consists in their interaction.

Charles Feidelson, Jr.

symbolism | allegory

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[Allegory] should ... be very sparingly practised, lest, whilst the writer plays with his own fancies and diverts himself by cutti... - MORE [Allegory] should ... be very sparingly practised, lest, whilst the writer plays with his own fancies and diverts himself by cutting the air with his wide spread wings, he should soar out of view of his readers, leaving them in confusion and perplexity to explore his viewless track.

Sarah Fielding

wit | writers and writing | reading

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[Allegory] is a flight by which the human wit attempts at one and the same time to investigate two objects, and consequently is fi... - MORE [Allegory] is a flight by which the human wit attempts at one and the same time to investigate two objects, and consequently is fitted only to the most exalted geniuses.

Sarah Fielding

wit | writers and writing | language

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The essential difference between novel and romance lies in the conception of characterization. The romancer does not attempt to cr... - MORE The essential difference between novel and romance lies in the conception of characterization. The romancer does not attempt to create "real people" so much as stylized figures which expand into psychological archetypes. It is in the romance that we find Jung's libido, anima, and shadow reflected in the hero, heroine, and villain respectively. That is why the romance so often radiates a glow of subjective intensity that the novel lacks, and why a suggestion of allegory is constantly creeping in around the fringes. Certain elements of character are released in the romance which make it naturally a more revolutionary form than the novel. The novelist deals with personality, with characters wearing their personae or social masks. He needs the framework of a stable society, and many of our best novelists have been conventional to the verge of fussiness. The romancer deals with individuality, with characters in vacuo idealized by revery, and, however conservative he may be, something nihilistic and untamable is likely to keep breaking out of his pages.

Northrop Frye

novel | romance literature

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Why, ever since Adam, who has got to the meaning of this great allegory—the world? Then we pygmies must be content to have our p... - MORE Why, ever since Adam, who has got to the meaning of this great allegory—the world? Then we pygmies must be content to have our paper allegories but ill comprehended.

Herman Melville

philosophical

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A priest is he who lives solely in the realm of the invisible, for whom all that is visible has only the truth of an allegory. - MORE A priest is he who lives solely in the realm of the invisible, for whom all that is visible has only the truth of an allegory.

Friedrich Von Schlegel

clergy

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