The World Without Allegory

An essay on beauty.

“...truth hidden in beauteous fiction.”  Dante, Convivio.

 

In the twentieth century, and I expect the twenty-first to be a continuance, allegory was generally derided. In a century of disillusionment, of deconstruction, straightforward speech was appreciated. That is one reason I despise politics, and the worminess of those who would escape justice by ambiguity, such as by redefining words, like “the”, “a”, or “is”. In politics all words are under suspicion of allegorical or double meaning. This desire for truthful words meant disdain for figurative speech. In allegory not only the speech but the concepts are figurative.

 

There was a time, prior to the twentieth century, when all arts – poetry, painting, sculpture, architecture, music – were concerned with beauty. The twentieth century gave that up, for the most part. Dante’s quote reflects the usefulness of allegory – to convey truth in beauty, a statement that was prevalent five centuries later as Keats echoed the statement. But the twentieth century has no use for beauty. Any artist who still expressed the old motto was not taken seriously. Avante-gardism and novelty were the important methods, and thus became the subject of art, or rather, the art became subject to them. Beauty had grown old, irrelevant, delusional.

 

She still has her servants, the lineage, perhaps, of Dante, Chaucer, and Keats. They may no longer have the role in society they once had – they are the old house staff of the old lady, still not convinced that such servitude is archaic, or that we should give her the finger and proclaim our freedom by smearing her picture with dung.

 

Reviews

[MP.RILEY]

This is poignant in 2019 as we are presented with changing definitions daily and the demanded acceptance of things truly false or be labeled bigot, phobic or hater.
A: "I see a world filled with kites without strings. Imagine it!"
B: "Broken sticks and paper strewn across the ground?"
A: "Hater!"
A circular enforcement of delusion of those trying to imply superiority by exclaiming how much only the enlightened can appreciate the emperor's new clothes.
The underlying moral and lessons we should be learning from today's society I would much rather they were learned from fiction or HISTORY.
Thank you for this.

[escherflight]

Interesting to read an essay rather than poetry; I would argue that allegory does have its place in literature still, I think; the school children in the UK are still ploughing faithfully through 'The Lord of the Flies' on a regular basis, for example, but I'd definitely agree with your comments on beauty. In a culture where we are all supposed to look aesthetically beautiful, our literature shows us as otherwise.

[W.k.kortas]

As you wisely note, allegory has gotten a bit of a black eye of late, as some people cannot make the distinction between that and cynical and malicious parsing of language. Short, sharp, and spot-on.