Literature
Allusion
Allusion is a literary device that refers to a person, place, event, or work of art that is not explicitly mentioned in a text but is instead implied. It is often used to add depth and meaning to a story by drawing on the reader's prior knowledge and experiences. Allusions can be historical, cultural, or literary in nature.
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4 Key excerpts on "Allusion"
eBook - ePub- David R. Klingler(Author)
- 2021(Publication Date)
- Pickwick Publications(Publisher)
The alluding text does not say something about the alluded text. Instead, the alluding text points to the alluded text for the purpose of saying something about itself. Ross makes this point by explaining, “Lord Chesterfield. .. did not allude to the Book of Joshua in order to say something about Joshua, but to say something about the three European kings.” 251 At this point the final phrase in the definition of a literary Allusion can now be understood and the process of developing a definition for literary Allusion can be finalized. A literary Allusion is a literary device utilized by an author whereby allusive textual markers are placed into the alluding text (i.e., developing textual meaning) in order to activate meaning in a prior alluded text (i.e., the stable textual meaning of a previous text) so that the rhetorical relationship between the two contexts can be determined and the meaning created by the Allusion can then be imported into the author’s developing textual meaning. Defining the Terms of Literary Reference Now that a working definition of literary Allusion has been provided, the terms most often associated with Allusion can be defined and differentiated as well. Ben-Porat is correct in her analysis: Allusion has been associated with a variety of words and terms. The verbs “allude,” “hint,” “echo,” and “refer” are often used interchangeably by literary critics, as are the adjectives “suggestive,” “evocative,” and “allusive.” The practice of using these words synonymously is usually motivated by an effort to avoid the excessive and monotonous repetition of the same term, rather than by a desire to direct the reader’s attention to a particular phenomenon, Allusion in this case. 252 Therefore, it is often the case that many terms are used synonymously in an effort to avoid repetition. However, there is also an element of confusion that persists in the use of these terms
- Kelli S. O'Brien(Author)
- 2010(Publication Date)
- T&T Clark(Publisher)
Kort, ‘Take, Read’ (University Park, Penn.: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1996), p. 6. 6 Though that body of authoritative literature will usually be called ‘Scripture’, it will sometimes be helpful to distinguish that set of Scripture from a different set of Scripture texts, namely, the New Testament. The terms Old Testament and Tanak will be used in such cases. (Old Testament is used only in the sense of chronologically ‘older’ or ‘first’, without the modern denigration of what is ‘old’ and therefore worn out and to be replaced. It should be recalled that for much of human history what was older was more venerable.) Defining Allusion The concepts behind Allusion are not difficult to understand. However one of the problems inherent in studying Allusions in biblical literature is that different scholars use the relevant terms differently. One scholar will use the term ‘Allusion’ to refer to what another would call ‘influence’ or ‘intertextu-ality’ to refer to what another would call ‘Allusion’. For some, an ‘echo’ is a sort of proof-text. For others it is loaded with subtle interpretive impact. What follows will define and explain the term Allusion and other terms associated with it. Briefly put, an Allusion is a reference made by the author to a previous work that is indicated by verbal correspondence and that has interpretive value. The detailed explanation of the concept of Allusion that follows addresses three elements: authorial intention, verbal correspondence, and interpretation. Reference is a neutral term that applies to all verbal connections between passages that are, presumably, intentional. Reference is used without consid-eration of the clarity of connection between the passages, that is, whether the verbal correspondence between the passages is faint or strong. Reference is also used for verbal connections to other texts without regard to their inter-pretive value: they may have interpretive value or be totally devoid of it.
eBook - PDFAllusions in the Press
An Applied Linguistic Study
- Paul Lennon(Author)
- 2008(Publication Date)
- De Gruyter Mouton(Publisher)
3. Previous work on Allusion 3.1. The literary semantics model of Allusion This study is concerned with Allusion in newspapers. However, to the ex-tent that a theory of Allusion exists, it has been largely developed by those working within a literary tradition, and writers who have studied Allusion in newspapers tend to work within this descriptive framework too, which may therefore serve as a point of departure for the present discussion. This brief section will limit itself to linguistically oriented de-scriptions of the method of brief or “passing” Allusion based on quota-tions or names. Various forms of “extended” Allusion, whether imitative or parodic, as well as stylistic Allusion, are not of concern here. Also out-side the purview of the present study, of course, is the much larger field of intertextuality in literature, of which Allusion is but a part. The literary semantics model sees Allusion as a form of deliberate yet implicit intertextuality (Pope 1998: 235–236), “a device for linking texts” (Ben-Porat 1979: 588), a “trope of relatedness” (Perri 1984: 128), which works by means of the “deliberate incorporation of identifiable ele-ments from other sources” (Miner 1993: 39). Meyer (1961) introduced the term “cryptic quotation” for the device by which a short or fragmen-tary, often modified and usually unmarked quotation from one text is syntactically incorporated into the discourse of another and acquires a double meaning, that is to say a primary meaning which is determined by the text in praesentia and a secondary meaning which derives from the source text in absentia. The reader perceives the alluding segment in the text being read not so much as a quotation from the source text but as an “echo” of that quotation, because even in the case of verbatim re-production there will be a meaning contrast between the two segments of language by virtue of the fact that they occur in two different contexts (Still and Worton 1990: 12).
eBook - PDFTranslation and Nation
Towards A Cultural Politics of Englishness
- Roger Ellis, Liz Oakley-Brown(Authors)
- 2001(Publication Date)
- Multilingual Matters(Publisher)
In other words, the very act of alluding is probably more important, in terms of what it signifies culturally, than whatever might actually be alluded to, what-ever the context in which the Allusion appears. Discussing Allusion is not merely a matter of undertaking an arid scholarship of identification, for a critical enquiry predicated solely on tracking down sources would render each adoptive text a seemingly unproblematic literary artefact that blandly accepts back, as being uniquely its own, whatever the scholar may decide to mine from it. It would be, in fact, an exercise in mutual flattery: the scholar finally tracks down that tantalisingly elusive allu-sion that has for so long been winking mischievously at him/her from the pages of an adopted text, and the text responds by conferring upon the scholar the privilege of being the first to elucidate the hitherto ‘lost’ meaning. Effectively, text and scholar both congratulate each other for displaying such extraordinary breadth of reference. Wheeler distances himself from such self-serving aridity by insisting that the significance of Allusion lies just as much in how it is interpolated by the reader as in its existence as an Allusion – a matter of what is read from a text as well as of what is said by a text: 1111 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 1011 1 2 3111 4 5 6 7 8 9 20111 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 30111 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 40 41111 122 Translation and Nation [t]he reader’s response to an Allusion which he recognises as he reads, and whose context in its adopted text is familiar to him, is obviously more spontaneous, and generally stronger and more rewarding, than his response to an Allusion located with the help of reference books or computers can ever be. (Wheeler, 1979: 6–7) However, the problem here, one might argue, lies in defining the precise nature of what Wheeler terms this ‘spontaneous’ response.
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