ALLEGORY
Allegory takes place when the reading of the literal and the metaphoric become inseparable. Unlike Modernist theory which presupposes that the adequation of an image to a referent can be bracketed or suspended, and that the art object itself can be substituted metaphorically for its referent, the allegorical work neither brackets nor suspends the referent but works instead to problematize the activity of reference. Allegory is not concerned with mimesis but rather attempts to fissure the very representation of meaning.
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