Victorian Allegory

Clicks: 1
ID: 318108
2026
Free PDF
Article Quality & Performance Metrics
Overall Quality
Not rated
Combines reader engagement with the AI quality analysis. This article has not been analysed, so there is no overall score — reader engagement is measured and shown alongside.
AI Quality Assessment
Not analyzed
Readership in this journal

Ranked #1,457 of 1,518 articles by views in Oxford University Press eBooks

Most read Least read

Bar heights use a square-root scale. Only the 120 most-read articles are drawn; the journal has 1,518 in total.

Mint this article as an NFT
Not yet minted

Create a permanent, verifiable on-chain record of this article on the Scimatic Network. The NFT is held in your Journament account, and you can withdraw it to your own wallet at any time.

5 SUSD one-off · no wallet required
Sign in to mint
Abstract
Abstract Although the Victorian period’s association with the realist novel means its literature is not associated with allegory, its civic and everyday discourse was infused with allegorical modes. This chapter takes as its prompt Charles Dickens’s Bleak House and its depiction of the Roman Allegory painted on the lawyer Tulkinghorn’s ceiling. This figure, his pointing fingers, and other indexical gestures in the novel, provoke reflection on the uses and abuses of allegory in Victorian culture more generally. The novel exposes the allegorical mode of ‘telling otherwise’ that pervaded everyday life that includes the use of allegory as moral lesson, utilizing its claims to truth and transcendence (as identified by Walter Benjamin), the dangers of allegory’s instability and inherent openness to endless interpretation, and its use as a didactic mode for social regulation, including its function to perpetuate prejudice by associating persons with concepts, as in the depiction of the fallen woman and illegitimate child.
Reference Key
openalex_W7165550733 Use this key to autocite in the manuscript while using SciMatic Manuscript Manager or Thesis Manager
Authors Jo Carruthers
Journal Oxford University Press eBooks
Year 2026
DOI
10.1093/oxfordhb/9780192894359.013.0016
URL
https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780192894359.013.0016
Keywords Keywords not found

Citations

No citations found. To add a citation, contact the admin at info@scimatic.org

Comments

No comments yet. Be the first to comment on this article.