Allegory (Gr., made up of allos, 'other,' and agoria, 'speaking'), a figurative representation, in which properties attributed to the apparent subject really refer to another subject not named but intended to be understood. It is thus a continued or extended metaphor, a concrete narrative or picture intended to suggest an abstract truth or doctrine. It is supposed to be a figurative application of real facts. The New Testament parable is a short allegory, marked by simplicity and brevity, and with one definite moral; the classical fable is a short story, differing from the allegory only in not being necessarily probable in its incidents. Allegory differs from metaphor chiefly in its being longer sustained, and more fully carried out in its details: while metaphor is confined to a single expression or at most to a sentence, it is carried through the whole representation. It is not abstract ideas alone that are adapted to allegorical treatment; not only may virtue and vice, for instance, be personified and treated allegorically, but real persons may be represented by allegorical persons. Nor is language alone the medium of allegory; it may be addressed to the eye, and is often exhibited in painting, sculpture, or the actor's art.
We find allegory in use from the earliest ages. Orientals are specially fond of it. As examples from antiquity may be cited the comparison of Israel to a vine in the 80th Psalm; the beautiful passage in Plato's Phaedrus, where the soul is compared to a charioteer drawn by two horses, one white and one black; the description of Fame in the fourth book of the Aeneid. Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress is perhaps the most complete; Spenser's Faerie Queene, Swift's Tale of a Tub, Addison's 'Vision of Mirza' in the Spectator, and Thomson's Castle of Indolence, are well-known examples of the allegory.
ALLEGORICAL INTERPRETATION is that kind of interpretation by which the literal significance of a passage is either transcended or set aside, and a more spiritual and profound meaning elicited than is contained in the form or letter. The apostle Paul himself allegorises, or, at least, interprets spiritually the history of the free-born Isaac and the slave-born Ishmael (Gal. iv. 24). Allegorical interpretation with reference to the Old Testament, was most extensively employed by Philo Judæus, a philosophical Jew of Alexandria, and a contemporary of Jesus. His writings stimulated the allegorising tendencies of the Alexandrian school of Christian theologians, the most famous of whom are Clemens Alexandrinus and Origen. The latter went so far as to say that 'the Scriptures are of little use to those who understand them as they are written.' Thus he maintained that the Mosaic account of the Garden of Eden was allegorical; that Paradise only symbolised a high primeval spirituality; and that the expulsion from the Garden lay in the soul's being driven out of its region of original purity. The Neo-Platonists allegorised the ancient myths.