Allegory

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Allegory of the Plato cave

The allegory, from the Greek ἀλληγορία (allegory) «figuratively», is a literary figure or artistic theme, which seeks to represent an idea using human forms, animals or everyday objects.

The allegory tries to give an image to what has no image, so that it can be better understood by the general public. Drawing the abstract, making "visible" what is only conceptual, obeys a didactic intention. Thus, a blind woman with a scale is an allegory of justice, and a skeleton carrying a scythe is an allegory of death. The creator of allegories usually strives to explain them so that everyone can understand them. Due to its evocative nature, it was widely used as a resource on religious and profane subjects. It was used since Antiquity, at the time of Pharaonic Egypt, Ancient Greece, Rome, the Middle Ages and the Baroque, although the use of the term "allegory" in Grammar and Rhetoric begins in the I century B.C. C. with Cicero and Quintilian as main systematizers.

An allegory can be understood as an artistic theme or a literary figure used to symbolize an abstract idea from resources that allow it to be represented, either by appealing to individuals, animals or objects. To cite an example: the image of a skull with two crossed bones constitutes an allegory of piracy.

«... against the unfortunate confusion between symbol and allegory. Allegory is a more or less artificial representation of perfectly cognizable and expressable generalities and abstractions by other means. The symbol is the only possible expression of the symbolized, that is, the meaning with that which symbolizes. Never completely decipher. Symbolic perception operates a transmutation of immediate data (sensitive, literal), makes them transparent. Without this transparency it is impossible to move from one plane to the other. Concisely without a plurality of senses staggered in an ascending perspective, symbolic exegesis disappears, lacking function and meaning."
Henry Corbin

Allegory is also called a rhetorical procedure with a broader scope, insofar as by it an extensive and subdivided system of metaphorical images is created that represents a more complex thought or a real human experience, and in that sense it can constitute works whole, like Jean de Meung's Roman de la Rose; the allegory then becomes a cognitive instrument and is associated with analogical or analogical reasoning.

Tzvetan Todorov says that an allegory implies the existence of at least two meanings for the same words; we are told sometimes that meaning must first disappear, and sometimes that both must be together. Secondly, this double meaning is indicated in the work explicitly and does not depend on interpretation. The impossibility of attributing an allegorical meaning to the supernatural elements of the tale, refers us to the literal meaning.

Writers and speakers often use allegories to convey (semi-)hidden or complex meanings through symbolic figures, actions, images, or events, which together create the moral, spiritual, or political meaning the author wishes to convey. Many allegories use the personification of abstract concepts.

Etymology

PerlaNero A.x Cotton miniature. The Dreamer is located on the other side of the stream of the Lady Perla. Perla is one of the biggest allegories of the High Middle Ages.

First attested in English in 1382, the word allegory comes from the Latin allegoria, a Latinization of the Greek ἀλληγορία (allegory), "veiled, figurative language& #34;, which in turn comes from both ἄλλος (allos), "other, different" and from ἀγορεύω (agoreuo), & #34;to harangue, to speak in the assembly", which comes from ἀγορά (agora), "assembly".

Literary allegory

For example, Omar Khayyam affirms that human life is like a game of chess, in which the black squares represent the nights and the white squares the days; in it, the player is one more piece on the board. Jorge Manrique, on the other hand, affirms, taking it from Ecclesiastes, that our lives are rivers and since they only seem different in their course and flow, but not in their end, which is the sea/death: the end has already been written, but not the course of life. And Bernardo de Chartres taught that we are "dwarfs on the shoulders of giants", because by ourselves we cannot see very far, but standing on the shoulders of ancient knowledge we can see even more than the great men of the past saw.

The allegorical meaning is also one of the four that it is possible to extract from Sacred Scripture according to theologians. On the other hand, the Spanish allegorical poetry of the century XV influenced by Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy. We can see in Dante's Divine Comedy that the wolf is an allegory of betrayal and the lion is an allegory of pride. The main representatives were Don Íñigo López de Mendoza, the Marqués de Santillana and Juan de Mena.

The Baroque playwright Pedro Calderón de la Barca brought the allegorical dramatic subgenre to perfection in an act with a Eucharistic theme called auto sacramental, where the characters are actually allegories of abstract concepts. In The true god Pan , he defines the allegory thus:

Allegory is no more

that a mirror moving

what it's not with,

and it's all your elegance

when it comes up like that

both the copy in the table,

who is looking at one

Think he's looking at me.

A good example of allegory are the following verses by Jorge Manrique:

This world is the way

for the other, which is dwelling

without regret

But he's got a good guy.

to walk this day

without erring.

We leave when we are born

We walk, while we live,

and we're here.

while we die

So when we die

We rest.

(Coplas at the death of his father)

Or these phrases by Cervantes:

«Tell me, have you not seen any comedy where kings, emperors and pontiffs, knights, ladies and other different characters are introduced? One makes the ruffian, another the liar, this the merchant, that soldier, another the simple discreet, another the simple lover; and, having finished the comedy and stripping of the garments of the pearl, all the recitals remain equal.
"I have seen it," Sancho replied.
"For the same thing," said Don Quixote, "is happening in the comedy and treatment of this world, where some make the emperors, others the pontiffs, and, finally, all the figures can be introduced into a comedy; but, coming to the end, which is when life is over, everyone takes away the clothes that differentiated them, and are equal in the grave.
“Brave comparison!,” said Sancho, “although not so new that I have not heard it many and several times, like that of the game of chess, that, while the game lasts, each piece has its particular office; and, after the game is finished, they all mix, gather and sweep, and give with them in a bag, which is like giving with life in the grave.
"Every day, Sancho," said Don Quixote, "you're getting less simple and more discreet."
Quixote, II

La serie está ambientada en un futuro postapocalíptico y se centra en Alita ("Gally" en la versión japonesa original, y varios otros países), una mujer cyborg que ha perdido todos los recuerdos y se encuentra en un depósito de chatarra por un médico cibernético que la reconstruye y la cuida. Ella descubre que hay una cosa que recuerda, el legendario arte marcial cyborg Panzer Kunst, que la lleva a convertirse en una Cazadora Guerrera o cazarrecompensas. La historia rastrea los intentos de Alita por redescubrir su pasado y los personajes cuyas vidas impacta en su viaje. La serie de manga continúa en Battle Angel Alita: Last Order y Battle Angel Alita: Mars Chronicle.

Trama

Battle Angel Alita cuenta la historia de Alita, una cyborg amnésica. Su cabeza y pecho intactos, en animación suspendida, son encontrados por el experto en cibermedicina Daisuke Ido en el basurero local. Ido logra revivirla y, al descubrir que ha perdido la memoria, la llama Alita en honor a su gato recientemente fallecido. La Alita reconstruida pronto descubre que instintivamente recuerda el legendario arte marcial Panzer Kunst, aunque no recuerda nada más. Alita usa su Panzer Kunst para convertirse primero en una cazarrecompensas, matando criminales cyborg en el Depósito de chatarra, y luego como jugadora estrella en el brutal deporte de gladiadores de Motorball. Mientras está en combate, Alita despierta recuerdos de su vida anterior en Marte. Se involucra con la ciudad flotante de Zalem (Tiphares en algunas traducciones más antiguas) como uno de sus agentes y es enviada a cazar criminales. El principal es el genio loco Desty Nova, que tiene una relación compleja y en constante cambio con Alita.

Main article: Allegory of the cave

In the allegory of the cave, Plato seeks to explain that humanity cannot access true knowledge, even if it tries; but only sees a shadow of it. This allegory consists of a cave, where there is a group of prisoners and a bonfire, which casts the shadows of what is happening outside the cave. The prisoners consider the shadows they see to be the truth and when one of them comes out of the cave, having been in the dark for so long, he has difficulty seeing the outside world which was the truth.

Dialectic of master and slave

Main article: Dialectic of the master and the slave

In this allegory, Hegel seeks to explain universal history and his theory of the development of self-consciousness. For Hegel, universal history consists of a society in which unequal relations have developed, where there is an entity recognized as the master, and one that recognizes the master, that is, the slave. This is because, when there is a clash of desires of the individuals, the recognized entity tries to impose itself on the others. This is important since we build our own identity depending on the way we relate to others.

Kant's Dove

In Critique of Pure Reason (1781), Kant uses allegory as a rhetorical resource to broaden the meaning of a metaphor. In this allegory, Kant makes a judgment about metaphysics, stating that it is not part of pure reason because it cannot be a science since it does not have any certainty in its ideas. For this, he says that metaphysics is like a dove that flies through empty space, without any support or foundation. In addition, Kant exemplifies this with the philosopher Plato, since the latter trusted in the truth of his metaphysical ideas, but for Kant these are only speculations since they do not have a basis or a certainty from which to start to develop other ideas.

"The light dove, which feels the resistance of the air that goes up when flying freely, could be imagined that it would fly much better even without an empty space. In this same way Plato left the world of senses, for imposing such narrow limits on understanding. Plato dared to go beyond them, flying in the empty space of pure reason through the wings of ideas. He did not realize that, with all his efforts, nothing progressed, as he had no support point, so to speak, he had no basis to stand and apply his forces to move the understanding. But it usually happens to the human reason that soon ends its building in speculation and does not examine until then whether the foundations have the right settlement. »

Allegory in painting

In art history it is the artistic representation of abstract ideas through figures or attributes. Characteristic are the allegories of the Flemish painter El Bosco, in The Hay Wain or The Garden of Earthly Delights, although they are also typical of other authors, such as Botticelli in his Allegory of Spring, or The Calumny of Apelles.

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