Allegory (ἀλληγορία) is an artistic device that allows you to express an abstract idea through an image. Allegories in narrative art appeared long before literature in its modern sense. In all religions and beliefs, it was customary to personify the forces of nature. Each element had its embodiment - a deity. The allegories of the Iliad, Odyssey, the epic about Keret, Gilgamesh, and others are allegorical. Allegories gave the narrative expressiveness and clarity.
What is allegory in literature at an early stage can be seen in the gospel. The disciples of Christ are uneducated people, fishermen and artisans, far from abstract ideas. To convey to them the essence of the doctrine, Christ uses the parable form, accessible understandable images: shepherd, sheep, sower.
In ancient Greece, art in all its forms reached its peak much earlier and was primarily the prerogative of educated people. Here allegorical presentation of information acquires artistry. What is allegory in the literature of the ancient period, can be seen in the example of Aesop's fables. Using comparisons of people with animals, the fabulist generalizes the vice of a particular character to a whole category of his kind and at the same time ridicules the prototype, reduces it to the level of an animal. And at the same time slightly masking personal attack, thus avoiding open conflict.
Middle Ages. Europe lives under the unbearable oppression of the Inquisition, it is dangerous to express thoughts openly. Here the task is not to convey the idea in a visual form, on the contrary, to disguise it, to make it accessible only to the initiates.
Aesopian language for writers becomes the only possible form of expression of ideas. Allegories of the Middle Ages are gloomy, filled with fear, a sense of hopelessness and hopelessness of existence. What is allegory in the literature of the Middle Ages can be traced on the example of Dante’s poem "The Divine Comedy".
The thaw begins in the Renaissance, closer to the new time. Its echoes are clearly visible on the example of the most famous allegorical poem in world culture - Goethe's “Faust”. From the darkness of scholasticism, from the throwing of a hobbled spirit, from the feeling of his own powerlessness, the hero comes to the realization of the need for light, freedom and happiness for everyone. The most revealing is “Classical Walpurgis Night”: in this chapter the longing for a free and natural existence in the most common symbolic embodiment - ancient classicism is read.
What is allegory in the literature of the East, is best seen in Chinese and Japanese patterns: if the ancient Indian texts are closer in spirit to the Asia Minor and antique (figurative and visual), then in neighboring cultures poetic allegories come first. Here, it is customary to poetize everything: life, dullness - thanks to condensed images.
Soviet Union. The country is dominated by tough nomenclature pressure, openly you can only glorify the system and pour mud on ideological enemies. Writers who do not fall into the ideological trend are switching to Aesopian language. That is, again an allegory. Examples from fiction are The Master and Margarita, the prose of Pasternak and Platonov. The strongest allegorical decision is the final of the poem “Moscow-Petushki” by V. Erofeev: four embodied symbols of the infernal regime pierce the hero with an awl “very throat”.
The era of postmodernism has come. And again in honor of allegory. Examples from the literature are the works of Pelevin and Sorokin. For some time, the pendulum was pumped out: not the disguise of the idea, but the expressiveness of the presentation is important.
The bridge between the Soviet era and the present was the work of A. and B. Strugatsky. It is common for science fiction to foresee the future. Written a very long time ago “It is difficult to be a god” and “Inhabited island” - the brightest allegory of today's Russia.