Beginning of Essay
, pronounced AL uh gawr ee, is a story with more than one meaning. Most allegories have moral or religious meanings. Famous allegories include the fables attributed to Aesop, an ancient Greek writer. Aesop's fables seem to describe the adventures of animals and ....

Middle of Essay
.... purgatory. Allegorically, the poem describes a Christian soul rising from a state of sin to a state of blessedness. Other allegories include the parables of Jesus, and The Faerie Queene, written by the English poet Edmund Spenser in the late 1500's. Allegories lost popularity in Europe after about 1600, but some, such as Pilgrim's Progress (1678, 1684) gained recognition in later times. Allegory also exists in other ways. Many novels include allegorical suggestions of an additional level of meaning. Examples include Moby-Dick (1851), a whaling adventure that raises issues of human struggle and fate in a mysterious universe, and Lord of the Flie ....