Dante Alighieri's Four Senses of Allegory

Allegory is a figure of speech in which abstract ideas and principles are described in terms of a story, picture or a poem.

E.g. Shakespeare’s The Tempest: a fight between good and evil on a deserted island

Orwell- Animal Farm: Pigs stand for political figures of the Russian revolution

Allegory is integral to the work of Dante. In his work The Banquet (1306-1309) he states that allegory has four senses, which he explains as follows:

1. Literal: this is the sense that doesn’t go beyond the surface of the letter, as in the fables of the poets.
2.   Allegorical: this is the one that is hidden beneath the literal meaning of a fable. It expresses the hidden truth behind a story. As an example for this Dante offers Ovid’s account of Orpheus taming the wild beasts. The allegorical meaning of this, according to Dante, is the wise man makes cruel heart grow tender and humble.
3.  Moral: moral sense is illustrated by the Gospel account of Christ’s ascending the mountain to be transfigured.  Among the 12 disciples he chose only three to accompany him. The moral idea is that in matter of great secrecy we should have few companions.
4. Anagogical: ie. Beyond the sense. This occurs when a scripture is expounded in a spiritual sense more than its literal sense. Dante recalls Psalm 114 (the Bible) which states when the people of Israel left Egypt “Judea was made whole and free”. It means, for Dante, when the soul departs from sin it is made whole and free in its power. Egypt is seen as ‘sin’ or ‘evil’ and the Israel people is the soul’

Dante insisted that the literal meaning always comes first. He pictures the literal meaning as being on the outside, enclosing the other senses, which are within. By insisting on allegory and its senses Dante was partly reacting against the definition of allegory and metaphor by classical rhetoricians as just a mere substitution of one set of terms for another. He inculcate that allegory is a powerful tool to express the ‘dark’ subjects otherwise forbidden especially concerning God and eternity.