An allusion is a figure of speech that makes a reference/representation of/to a well-known person, place, event, literary work, or work of art. M. H. Abrams defined allusion as "a brief reference, explicit or indirect, to a person, place or event, or to another literary work or passage". ^[1] It is left to the reader or hearer to make the connection (Fowler); an overt allusion is a misnomer for what is simply a reference.

In a freer informal definition allusion is a passing or casual reference; an incidental mention of something, either directly or by implication.

Contents 1 Scope and history 2 Functioning 3 Types of allusion 4 15 minutes of fame 5 Catch-22 6 T. S. Eliot and James Joyce 7 References

Scope and history

An allusion is a literary term, though the word also has come to encompass indirect references to any source, including allusions in film or the visual arts. The visual arts are art forms that focus on the creation of works which are primarily Visual in nature such as Painting, Photography In the field of film criticism, a film-maker's intentionally unspoken visual reference to another film has come to be called an homage. For medieval usage see Homage (medieval and Commendation ceremony, or Homage (disambiguation Homage (from the French It may even be sensed that real events have allusive overtones, when a previous event is inescapably recalled by a current one. "Allusion is bound up with a vital and perennial topic in literary theory, the place of authorial in interpretation", William Irwin observed, in asking "What is an allusion?"^[2] Without the hearer or reader's comprehending the author's intention, an allusion becomes merely a decorative device.

Allusive substitutions are as old as English: see kenning. A kenning ( Old Norse kenning, Modern Icelandic pronunciation) is a Circumlocution used instead of an ordinary Noun in Old Norse Allusion is an economical device, a figure of speech that draws upon the ready stock of ideas or emotion already associated with a topic in a relatively short space. A figure of speech, sometimes Thus, an allusion is understandable only to those with prior knowledge of the covert reference in question. (See cultural literacy. Cultural literacy is the ability to converse fluently in the Idioms, Allusions and informal content which creates and constitutes a dominant Culture. . . )

Functioning

A sobriquet is an allusion: by metonymy one aspect of a person or other referent is selected to identify it, and it is this shared aspect that makes an allusion evocative. A sobriquet is a Nickname or a fancy name usually a familiar name given by others as distinct from a Pseudonym assumed as a disguise but a nickname which is familiar In Rhetoric, metonymy (mɨˈtɒnɨmi is the use of a word for a concept or object associated with the concept/object originally denoted by the word In an allusion to "the city that never sleeps", New York will be recognized. Recognizing the figure in this condensed puzzle-disguise^[3] additionally serves to reinforce cultural solidarity between the maker of the remark and the hearer: their shared familiarity with The Big Apple bonds them. ^[4] Some aspect of the referent must be invoked and identified, in order for the tacit association to be made; the allusion is indirect in part because "it depends on something more than mere substitution of a referent"^[5] The allusion depends as well on the author's intent; an industrious reader may search out parallels to a figure of speech or a passage, of which the author under examination was unaware, and offer them as unconscious allusions— coincidences that a critic might not find illuminating. Addressing such issues is an aspect of hermeneutics. Hermeneutics may be described as the development and study of Theories of the interpretation and understanding of texts

William Irwin remarks that allusion moves in only one direction: "If A alludes to B, then B does not allude to A. The Bible does not allude to Shakespeare, though Shakespeare may allude to the Bible. " Irwin appends a note: "Only a divine author, outside of time, would seem capable of alluding to a later text. "^[6] This is the basis for Christian readings of Old Testament prophecy, which asserts that passages are to be read as allusions to future events. Bible prophecy, or " biblical prophecy " is the belief in prophecies in the Bible.

Types of allusion

In Homer, brief allusions could be made to mythic themes of generations previous to the main narrative because they were already familiar to the epic's hearers: one example is the theme of the Calydonian boarhunt. Homer ( Ancient Greek:, Homēros) is a legendary ancient Greek epic Poet, traditionally said to be the author of the epic poems the The Calydonian Boar is one of the monsters of Greek mythology that had to be overcome by heroes of the Olympian age In Hellenistic Alexandria, literary culture and a fixed literary canon known to readers and hearers, made a densely allusive poetry effective; the poems of Callimachus offer the best-known examples. This article focuses on the cultural aspects of the Hellenistic age for the historical aspects see Hellenistic period. The Western canon is a term used to denote a canon of books and more widely music and art, that has been the most influential in Callimachus ( Greek:, 310 BC/305 BC-240 BC was a native of the Greek colony of Cyrene, Libya. . . ,

In discussing the richly allusive poetry of Virgil's Georgics, R. Publius Vergilius Maro ( October 15, 70 BCE &ndash September 21, 19 BCE later called Virgilius, and known in English as Virgil or The Georgics, published in 29 BCE, is the second major work by the Latin poet Virgil. F. Thomas^[7] distinguished six categories of allusive reference, which are applicable to a wider cultural sphere. These types are 1) Casual Reference, "the use of language which recalls a specific antecedent, but only in a general sense" that is relatively unimportant to the new context; 2) Single Reference, in which the hearer or reader is intended to "recall the context of the model and apply that context to the new situation"; such a specific single reference in Virgil, according to Thomas, is a means of "making connections or conveying ideas on a level of intense subtlety"; 3) Self-Reference, where the locus is in the poet's own work; 4) Corrective Allusion, where the imitation is clearly in opposition to the original source's intentions; 5) Apparent Reference ""which seems clearly to recall a specific model but which on closer inspection frustrates that intention" and 6) Multiple Reference or Conflation, which refers in various ways simultaneously to several sources, fusing and transforming the cultural traditions.

Allusion differs from the similar term intertextuality in that it is an intentional effort on the author's part. Intertextuality is the shaping of texts' meanings by other texts The success of an allusion depends in part on at least some of its audience "getting" it. Allusions may be made increasingly obscure, until at last they are understood by the author alone, who thereby retreats into a private language. The private language argument is a philosophical Argument introduced by Ludwig Wittgenstein in his later work especially in the Philosophical Investigations

A literature has grown round explorations of the allusions in Alexander Pope's The Rape of the Lock or T. S. Eliot's The Wasteland

Martin Luther King, Jr., alluded to the Gettysburg Address in starting his "I Have a Dream" speech by saying 'Five score years ago. Alexander Pope (21 May 1688 – 30 May 1744 is generally regarded as the greatest English Poet of the eighteenth century best known for his Satirical The Rape of the Lock is a Mock-heroic Narrative poem written by Alexander Pope, first published anonymously in Lintot's Miscellany Thomas Stearns Eliot, OM (September 26 1888 – January 4 1965 was a poet Dramatist, and Literary critic. The Waste Land ( 1922) is a highly influential 434-line modernist poem by T Martin Luther King Jr ( January 15, 1929 April 4, 1968) was an American clergyman, Activist and prominent leader The Gettysburg Address is a speech by US President Abraham Lincoln and one of the most quoted speeches in United States history. " I Have A Dream " is the popular name given to the historic public speech by Martin Luther King Jr . . "; his hearers were immediately reminded of Abraham Lincoln's "Four score and seven years ago", which opened the Gettysburg Address. Abraham Lincoln (February 12 1809 &ndash April 15 1865 the sixteenth President of the United States, successfully led his country through its greatest internal King's allusion effectively called up parallels in two historic moments.

An allusion may become trite and stale through unthinking overuse, devolving into a mere cliché, as in some of the following examples:

15 minutes of fame

Andy Warhol, a twentieth-century American man most famous for his pop-art images of Campbell soup cans and Marilyn Monroe, commented about the explosion of media coverage by saying, “In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes. A cliché (from French, klɪ'ʃe or cliche is a phrase expression or idea that has been overused to the point of losing its intended force For the song by David Bowie, see Andy Warhol (song. Andrew Warhola (August 6 1928 &ndash February 22 1987 known as Andy Warhol Campbell Soup Company ( (also known as Campbell's) is a well-known American producer of Canned soups and related products Marilyn Monroe (born Norma Jeane Mortenson, June 1 1926 &ndash August 5 1962 baptized Norma "

Today, when someone receives a great deal of media attention for something fairly trivial, and he or she is said to be experiencing his/her “15 minutes of fame”, the allusion is to Andy Warhol's famous saying.

Catch-22

This phrase comes from a novel by Joseph Heller. Joseph Heller (May 1 1923 – December 12 1999 was an American Satirical novelist Short story writer and playwright Catch-22 is set on a U.S. Army Air Force base in World War II. Catch-22 is a satirical, historical Novel by the American author Joseph Heller, first published in 1961 The United States Army Air Forces ( USAAF) was the military aviation arm of the United States of America during and immediately after World War II. World War II, or the Second World War, (often abbreviated WWII) was a global military conflict which involved a majority of the world's nations, including The “catch-22” refers to a regulation that states an airman’s request to be relieved from flight duty and it can only be granted if he is judged to be insane. However, anyone who does not want to fly dangerous missions is obviously sane. Thus, there is no way to avoid flying the missions.

Later in the book the old Woman in Rome explains that Catch-22 means, "They can do whatever they want to do. " This refers to the theme of the novel in which the authority figures consitently are abusing their powers, leaving the consequences to those in their command.

A “Catch-22” has come to mean, in common speech, an absurd or no-win situation.

T. S. Eliot and James Joyce

The poetry of T. S. Eliot is often described as "allusive", because of his habit of referring to names, places or images that may only make sense in the light of prior knowledge. Thomas Stearns Eliot, OM (September 26 1888 – January 4 1965 was a poet Dramatist, and Literary critic. This technique can add to the experience, but for the uninitiated can make Eliot's work seem dense and hard to decipher. The most densely allusive work in modern English is Finnegans Wake. Finnegans Wake is a fictional work by James Joyce, published in 1939 Joseph Campbell, Henry Morton Robinson and Edmund L. Epstein provided A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake (1944) that unlocked some of James Joyce's most obscure allusions. A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake (1944 by Mythologist Joseph Campbell and Henry Morton Robinson is a work of literary criticism James Augustine Aloysius Joyce (2 February 1882 &ndash 13 January 1941 was an Irish expatriate writer widely considered to be one of the most influential writers of the

References

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