called midrash to form a systematic method for inter-
preting the Old Testament scriptures in which differ-
ent levels of meaning could be discerned. While
different interpreters in the late-classical and medieval
periods argued over how many levels of meaning
exist—St. Augustine, for example, generally speaks of
two levels—the fourfold method of interpretation
became the best-known example of this allegorical sys-
tem. Somewhat confusingly, the second level in this
scheme is called the allegorical level, while the third
level is called the moral (tropological) level and the
fourth the anagogic (eschatological) level (see ANA-
GOGY). The clearest and most famous example of this
method appears in Dante’s “Letter to Can Grande Della
Scala,” where he provides an interpretation of the Isra-
elites’ exodus from Egypt: “If we look only at the letter,
this signifi es that the children of Israel went out of
Egypt in the time of Moses; if we look at the allegory, it
signifi es our redemption through Christ; if we look at
the moral sense, it signifi es the turning of the soul from
the sorrow and misery of sin to a state of grace; if we
look at the anagogical sense, it signifi es the passage of
the blessed soul from the slavery of this corruption to
the freedom of eternal glory.” While interpreters using
the fourfold method have applied it to most scriptures
in the Old Testament, very few yield distinctly differ-
ent readings on all four levels.
While early theologians such as Augustine and Ori-
gen, and poets like Dante claimed Paul’s injunction
that “the Letter killeth, while the spirit saveth” legiti-
mized the search for hidden or mysterious senses of
scriptural passages, the practice was always controver-
sial. For instance, William Tyndale, an early translator
of the Bible, warned, “if thou leave the literal sense,
thou canst not but go out of the way.” While Tyndale’s
concern lay solely with the interpretation of scripture,
the same caution has been called for in the interpreta-
tion of secular texts, despite there being no sure
method for knowing if an interpretation has gone
astray. The most that can be safely said is that allegori-
cal interpretation requires a balance between the ver-
bal and historical context established by the text and
the historical situation of the individual reader. The
consistency of interpretation between the literal and
fi gurative levels of the text provides the only test of the
soundness of allegorical interpretations. If the fi gura-
tive meaning imputed to the text remains compatible
with the literal level over the entire text, then the alle-
gorical reading is valid. However, if confl icts emerge,
the allegorical reading should be abandoned.
The most famous allegorical narratives, Dante’s
Divine Comedy and EDMUND SPENSER’s The FAERIE QUEENE,
represent the culmination of the rhetorical and inter-
pretive forms of allegory. From the rhetorical tradition,
narrative allegory takes the use of continued metaphors
to delight readers, and from the interpretive tradition
there is the potential for a reader’s engagement with
such a text to be instructive. The centrality of Dante’s
and Spenser’s texts in the genre of allegorical narratives
rests on a number of factors, not the least of which is
artistry, but it also includes their connection to exter-
nal, explanatory documents. Spenser’s case concerns
his Faerie Queene and its dedicatory letter to SIR WALTER
RALEIGH. In this document, Spenser discusses both his
authorial intention, which “is to fashion a gentleman or
noble person in vertuous and gentle discipline,” and his
method for doing so, the “continued Allegory, or darke
CONCEIT.” The central allegorical device in each book of
the poem is a knight who becomes perfected in a virtue.
For example, in the fi rst book he presents, Spenser says
“Redcrosse, in whome I expresse Holynes,” in the sec-
ond he presents “Sir Guyon, in whome I sette forth
Temperaunce,” and so on. Each of his knights faces a
set of tasks and challenges, the successful completion of
which strengthens their possession of the virtue they
represent. In defending his decision to use allegory to
achieve his ends, Spenser acknowledges that the dark
conceit is a “Methode [that.. .] will seeme displeas-
aunt” to some of his readers who “had rather have good
discipline delivered plainly in way of precepts, or ser-
moned at large, as they use,” but he defends his choice
on the grounds that telling readers how to behave is less
effective than showing them how to act.
While Spenser’s and Dante’s works hold a central
place in the canon of allegorical narratives because of
the external materials that have provided such valuable
insights into the allegorical method, such materials are
not essential for a work to be considered an allegorical
text. What is essential is that the text engages the reader
in a process of sustained interpretation. Allegorical8 ALLEGORY