Word Finder - allegorical

definition

Of, relating to, or containing allegory

In his allegorical poems reminiscences of the master's style and literary habit are most frequent.

The one in the council chamber upstairs dates from 1527 and gives an allegorical representation of the Virtues and the Vices.

He is not always very critical, and he is passionately fond of allegorical interpretations, but these were the faults of his age.

The followers of Credner are literalists; the opposite school of moderns includes some literalists (as Duhm), while others (like Hilgenfeld, and in a modified sense Merx) adopt the old allegorical interpretation which treats the locusts as a figure for the enemies of Jerusalem.

In the Sala dei Nove or della Pace above are the noble allegorical frescoes of Ambrogio Lorenzetti representing the effects of just and unjust government; the Sala delle Balestre or del Mappamondo is painted by Simone di Martino (Memmi) and others, the Cappella della Signoria by Taddeo di Bartolo, and the Sala del Consistorio by Beccafumi.

Mingled with his allegorical philosophy are the most vehement attacks upon the established religion.

Both of these dramas, which were not printed at the time but were widely circulated in manuscript, are of the type which preceded the Shakespearean age - they are allegorical and all the characters are types.

He took Greek metaphysical theories, and, by the allegorical method, interpreted them in accordance with the Jewish Revelation.

But these standards proved inadequate to the emergency, for it was possible, especially by the use of the allegorical method, to interpret them in more than one way, and their apostolic origin and authority were not everywhere admitted.

Brozik is known for his historical canvases, among them " John Hus before the Council of Constance," while others worth mention are the marine painter Knuepfer, the landscape painters Slavicek and Hudecek, and Preisler and Svabinsky as painters of portraits and allegorical subjects.

His most celebrated pieces are Hugo; Mnich (" The Monk"); Lambro, a Greek corsair, quite in the style of Byron; Anhelli, a very Dantesque poem expressing under the form of an allegory the sufferings of Poland; Krol duck (" The Spirit King"), another mysterious and allegorical poem; Waclaw, on the same subject as the Marya of Malczewski, to be afterwards noticed; Beniowski, a long poem in ottava rima on this strange adventurer, something in the style of Byron's humorous poems; Kordyan, of the same school as the English poet's Manfred; Lilla Weneda, a poem dealing with the early period of Slavonic history.

He also opposed Aristarchus, and supported the Stoics, by insisting on an allegorical interpretation of Homer.

About the same date, and in the same province of northern Africa, Martianus Capella produced his allegorical work on the " liberal arts," the principal, and, indeed, often the only, text-book of the medieval schools.

The authors he recommends include " Aesop " and Sallust, the tragedies of Seneca and the epic poets, especially Virgil, whom he interprets in an allegorical sense.

But if the use of versions, or of an uncritical text of the original, was one condition unfavourable to criticism, another that was not less serious was the dominance over both Jews and Christians of unsound methods of interpretation - legal or dogmatic or allegorical.

The leading Reformers - Luther, Zwingli, Melancthon - frequently expressed themselves against the prevailing view of the manifold sense of Scripture, and in particular questioned the legitimacy of allegorical interpretation - except for purposes of popular and practical exposition.

In the interpretation of myths Neoplatonism followed the allegorical method, as practised especially by the Stoa; but the importance it attached to the spiritualized myths was unknown to the Stoic philosophers.

Ostensibly it is written in opposition to Whiston's attempt to show that the books of the Old Testament did originally contain prophecies of events in the New Testament story, but that these had been eliminated or corrupted by the Jews, and to prove that the fulfilment of prophecy by the events of Christ's life is all "secondary, secret, allegorical, and mystical," since the original and literal reference is always to some other fact.

There is every appearance that the author was a Hellenist who lacked knowledge of the Hebrew text, and derived his metaphysic and his allegorical method from the Alexandrian rather than the Palestinian schools.

The last chapter but one (181), "De Sancto Pelagio Papa," contains a kind of history of the world from the middle of the 6th century; while the last (182) is a somewhat allegorical disquisition, "De Dedicatione Ecclesiae."

In a similar nianner, the ethical and allegorical methods of interpretation came into much greater prominence towards the end of the New Kingdom.

Hence what is not strictly allegorical after the fashion of the Romaunt of the Rose or Chaucer's exercises in that kind, is for the most part occasional, dealing with courtiers' sorrow and fun, with the conventional plaints on the vanity of the world and with pious ejaculation.

These writings are remarkable for their intensely mystical and allegorical interpretations of the text.

Less important than Die Wahlverwandtschaften was Pandora (181 o), the final product of Goethe's classicism, and the most uncompromisingly classical and allegorical of all his works.

In order that his work might fairly stand beside that of the old Latin writers, Severus ignored the allegorical methods of interpreting sacred history to which the heretics and the orthodox of his.

In the centre the colossal statue of Luther rises, on a pedestal at the base of which are sitting figures of Peter Waldo, Wycliffe, Hus and Savonarola, the heralds of the Reformation; at the corners of the platform, on lower pedestals, are statues of Luther's contemporaries, Melanchthon, Reuchlin, Philip of Hesse, and Frederick the Wise of Saxony, between which are allegorical figures of Magdeburg (mourning), Spires (protesting) and Augsburg (confessing).

It is altogether allegorical, and requires to be interpreted.

In the two latter instances there may be noted the allegorical interpretation of traditional doctrines and sacred writings which is a common characteristic of theosophical writers.

To this period are due famous frescoes in the Palazzo Schifanoia, which was built by the Este family; those of the lower row depict the life of Borso of Este, in the central row are the signs of the zodiac, and in the upper are allegorical representations of the months.

Mingled with all these were the ancient legends of gods and heroes, accepted as inspired scripture by the people, and by philosophers in part explained away by an allegorical exegesis and in part felt increasingly as a burden to the intelligence.

The allegorical decorations here are by Persico and Horatio Greenough; those on the Senate portico are by Thomas Crawford, who designed the bronze doors at the entrances to the Senate and House wings.

The first name is that of Theagenes of Rhegium, contemporary of Cambyses (525 B.C.), who is said to have founded the " new grammar " (the older " grammar " being the art of reading and writing), and to have been the inventor of the allegorical interpretations by which it was sought to reconcile the Homeric mythology with the morality and speculative ideas of the 6th century B.C. The same attitude in the " ancient quarrel of poetry and philosophy " was soon afterwards taken by Anaxagoras; and after him by his pupil Metrodorus of Lampsacus, who explained away all the gods, and even the heroes, as elementary substances and forces (Agamemnon as the upper air, &c.).

Indeed, it would be hard to find anything less consonant with godliness and divine perfection than the pranks of this juvenile god; and if poets and thinkers try to explain them away by dint of allegorical interpretation, the plain man will not for all their refinements take these amusing adventures any the less au pied de la lettre.

Men bred in the cloister and the lecture-room of the logicians, trained in scholastic disputations, versed in allegorical interpretations of the plainest words and most apparent facts, could not find the key which might unlock those stores of wisdom and of beauty.

Along with these works may be classed the curiously learned piece, De Sapientia Veterum, in which he works out a favourite idea, that the mythological fables of the Greeks were allegorical and concealed the deepest truths of their philosophy.

He is the author of a mystical and allegorical commentary on the Psalms, first published by Erasmus in 1522, and by him attributed to the elder Arnobius.

Woolston, at first to all appearance working earnestly in behalf of an allegorical but believing interpretation of the New Testament miracles, ended by assaulting, with a yet unknown violence of speech, the absurdity of accepting them as actual historical events, and did his best to overthrow the credibility of Christ's principal miracles.

Their language is vague and allegorical, full of allusions and pious Mussulman invocations; the author continually announces that he is about to speak without mystery or reserve, but all the same never gives any precise details of the secrets he professes to reveal.

Of his many works written in his native language the most important is his Labyrinth of the World, an allegorical tale which is perhaps the most famous work written in Bohemian.'

They are always written in the author's highest style, a style perfectly eloquent and unaffected; they can only be interpreted (on the free-thinking hypothesis) as allegorical with the greatest difficulty and obscurity, and it is pretty certain that no one reading the book without a thesis to prove would dream of taking them in a non-natural sense.

The Louvre owns two portraits of Mme Lebrun and her daughter, besides five other portraits and an allegorical composition.

Le Livre des tournois, a book of ceremonial, and the allegorical romance, Conqueste qu'un chevalier nomme le Cuer d'amour espris feist d'une dame appelee Doulce Mercy, with other works ascribed to him, were perhaps dictated to his secretaries, or at least compiled under his direction.

Besides these lyrical compositions are the semi-epical or allegorical Trionfi - Triumphs of Love, Chastity, Death, Fame, Time and Divinity, written in terza rima of smooth and limpid quality.

The hall, converted into a royal chapel by George I., and now housing the museum of the Royal United Service Institution, the buildings of which adjoin it, is a fine specimen of Palladian architecture, and its ceiling is adorned with allegorical paintings by Rubens, restored and rehung in 1907.

The development that had thus begun in the time of Paul reaches maturity in the Fourth Gospel, whose dependence on Philo appears (I) in the use of the allegorical method, (2) in many coincident passages, (3) in the dominant conception of the Logos.

The best products of this factory are figures and groups representing contemporary life, or allegorical subjects in the rococo taste of the period, and they are surpassed only by those of the more famous factory at Meissen.

The work professes to be an interpretation of an allegorical picture in the temple of Cronus at Athens or Thebes.

Farther east and lying in the centre of the book-trade quarter stand close together the Buchhandlerhaus (booksellers' exchange), the great hall decorated with allegorical pictures by Sascha Schneider, and the Buchgewerbehaus, a museum of the book trade, both handsome red brick edifices in the German Renaissance style, erected in 1886-1890.

Admitting that the fable of the battle of the gods was " unbecoming," if literally understood, Theagenes represented it as an allegorical account of the war of the elements.

Heraclitus, too, disposed of the myth of the bondage of Hera as allegorical philosophy.