Acht! (8)

[may_posa1]

Beowulf hey...honestly I felt a little inexperienced when I realized that I recognized that name yet I have never read it and new nothing about the work. I asked my friends Chris and Erin if they had ever heard of Beowulf they both recalled the story, maybe its an Ontario school thing, damn my west-coast-ness, actually I take that back, maybe its a

Comments

[ofcatslives]

Hey Leslie-Anne,

Don't worry too much about not being familiar with Beowulf because I knew nothing about it until I was 20 years old and had just begun university. In terms of allegory, I may be able to provide some help. I didn't quite understand the The Lord of The Rings analogy either, so I will direct you to this website that discusses both the meaning of allegory and uses The Lord of The Rings as an example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegory

Hope it helps,

Janice

[ofcatslives]

This is another aspect of allegory that may be of interest to you: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegory_in_the_Middle_Ages
This website gives a brief outline of the historical use of allegory and discusses the 4 levels of allegory: literal, typological, moral and anagogical. This type of allegory was often applied to medieval texts. I now remember why I felt so familiar with this when Professor Kuin mentioned it in tutorial. Last year I read Dante's The Divine Comedy and as the website mentions, this text may be the greatest allegory ever produced. If you are interested, here is a link to some information on Dante's The Divine Comedy, which is an allegory for the Christian afterlife: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Divine_Comedy

Janice

[flesh_purse]

Hey Little Buddy,
I don't know if I'm supposed to comment on here but I am anyways. To answer your allegory question:
Whenever I think of allegory I think of the medieval play Everyman. The main character, Everyman, is literally that: he is every man. Other characters include: Death, Kindred, Cousin, Goods, Knowledge, Strength, and Beauty. And as The Bedford Introduction to Drama describes it: "Each character does not just stand for a specific quality; he or she is that quality" (Jacobus 223).
I hope that helps :) If not, come on down and we can discuss it ad nauseam later!
\m/ Marta \m/

[meag_o]

I always thought an allegory was like a metaphor, but longer. Metaphors are maybe one phrase or idea in a text, but an allegory is the entire text. An allegory carries through the whole thing, painting a more descriptive picture than a metaphor would.

[tricia_stewart]

Hi Lesley-Anne, I see that you've got plenty of answers for your allegory question already so I'll stay away from that :) But I must say that I agree that it's probably better to have not known more about Beowulf before this class. The reason is that I didn't know anything about it either, well except that it involved a monster named Grendal. But anyway, I found that learning about it first from the perspective of this class made it more interesting to me somehow. That and having it compared to The Iliad just caught my interest. Well, I suppose I should stop rambling. Good post :)

-Tricia

[roger_kuin]

One last word on Allegory. My New York friend's granddaughter, who is 8 and has a Harvard professor for a dad, was asked -- when someone mentioned the word "allegory" -- by her mum if she knew what it meant.

"Of course!" she answered indignantly. "Allegory is when you get elected but you don't get to be President." .....................