Allegory Examples – The Best Literary Tools to Depict the Theme Poetically

Allegory has been in existence ever since the languages evolved and are as diverse as the languages and styles in which it has been written. Allegory has enjoyed a conspicuous presence in literary circles and in artistic forms and has been inspirational for many good works of literature all over the world.

Allegory is nothing but equating objects, actions or persons with meanings that lie outside the text. One of the best allegory examples in English literature is Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress (1678), a tale of Christian salvation. The contemporary examples include films like The Seventh Seal (1957) and Avatar (2009) and many popular novels like The Lord of the Flies among many others.

The term Allegory originated from the Greek word 'allos' meaning to speak, which conveys the meaning of a story in addition to the literal meaning. Allegory is a figure of speech in English , which enables the author to depict the plot in a more imaginative way instead of using plain language. Allegory is a literary tool in which the characters relate to exte
al factors and are used in the narrative literary works like drama, prose or verse (poetry) etc.

There are two main categories of Allegory examples including allegory of abstract themes and the political allegory. True to its name allegory of abstract themes is often employed in the literature of spiritual development and the characters usually represent emotions and abstract virtues like love, malice etc.

The works containing allegory examples are classified as the classical era, the medieval era and the modern era. Some of the allegory examples of the classical era include Plato's allegory of the cave, the Holy Bible, The Book of Revelation in the New Testament, and the parables told by Jesus Christ. The Lord of the Rings is a good example of allegory in modern era. Many popular movies and television serials like star trek have many allegory examples as well.

Allegory examples are explained in Cambridge encyclopedia where these are classified according to the era and are quite useful for literature students and authors. Allegory Examples are also used in Poetry. One of the best examples would be The Faerie Queene by Edmund Spenser where qualities like friendship, truth and justice are compared to other innate objects and beautifully represented allegorically.