What's the difference between allegory and illusion?

Allegory


Definition:

  • (n.) A figurative sentence or discourse, in which the principal subject is described by another subject resembling it in its properties and circumstances. The real subject is thus kept out of view, and we are left to collect the intentions of the writer or speaker by the resemblance of the secondary to the primary subject.
  • (n.) Anything which represents by suggestive resemblance; an emblem.
  • (n.) A figure representation which has a meaning beyond notion directly conveyed by the object painted or sculptured.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Byatt said that, while she had not wished to present an allegory or a polemic, the story was impelled by a profound sense of gloom about the environment and indeed about all human endeavours.
  • (2) But the bedeviled foray also works as a potent allegory on the slow, vice-like workings of conscience, as guilt hunts down the protagonists with the shrieking remorselessness of Greek furies.
  • (3) Christians believed, and believe, that the body is not only physical, but also spiritual and mystical, and many believed it was an allegory of church, state and family.
  • (4) In a country addicted to novelty and invention, he was proceeding to supply an instant lore of allegory, myth and fable.
  • (5) They had become an allegory for unhappy love, a foreshadow of Romeo and Juliet set in the Hindu Kush .
  • (6) Facebook Twitter Pinterest ‘Macabre allegory’: Otto Dix’s The Triumph of Death (1934).
  • (7) Heavy with symbolism, analytical rather than dramatic, it attempts nothing less than an allegory of colonialism and apartheid, one that dares to linger in complexity."
  • (8) But even more than this bravura dramatic writing, the story of Dr Rieux's selfless struggle with the illness, and the different responses of other citizens, colleagues and chance acquaintances, unfolds an urgent allegory of war.
  • (9) Their music has long been free of such unnecessary clutter as metaphor, allegory, and poetic conceit.
  • (10) Bamba Issa took its inspiration from a Disney comic book, Donald Duck and The Magic Hourglass , which UFO felt was “an allegory for capitalism, its arrogance and shortcomings”.
  • (11) Could we fight back against a world ruled by men?” Facebook Twitter Pinterest Armed with a brush … Self-portrait as the Allegory of Painting, by Gentileschi.
  • (12) So he positively enjoyed draping what is, in fact, a chilling allegory of paternal possessiveness and pseudo-scientific fanaticism, in the gaudy fabric of a "romance", just as the author pretends, in his pseudo-preface, to have discovered it among the works of "M de l'Aubépine" (French for "haw-thorn").
  • (13) The Double , it's said, is meant as an allegory: the straight man is Dostoevsky in real life, shy and often awkward; the arriviste is the author 2.0, the person he sometimes wished he was, who is quick-witted and irresistible to women.
  • (14) The sociology, the anthropology, the communication is so important, not like the veterinary or the wildlife or medical sciences," he told IRIN, explaining that epidemiological facts have to be translated in simple ways for ordinary people to understand, by using local allegories for instance.
  • (15) The film, like some of the original Apes movies, mixes intellect and allegory with adventure and special effects.
  • (16) They approached the cold war as melodrama and McCarthyism by way of allegory.
  • (17) Another way of reading it could be as an allegory about the self-destructive consequences of women's obsession with shaving.
  • (18) Clearly it is not so much a kiss he is portraying as an ecstatic allegory of all the copulations he can remember or imagine.
  • (19) She experimented towards the end, not always successfully, with symbol and allegory, and but for her success as a novelist would have been remembered as a great master of the short-story genre, which she always defended for its concentration, integrity and lack of compromise.
  • (20) Somehow the people who create television failed to create television, I believe Erin put it best when she referenced Plato's Allegory of the Cave – a very quick read if you would like to make this evening worthwhile.

Illusion


Definition:

  • (n.) An unreal image presented to the bodily or mental vision; a deceptive appearance; a false show; mockery; hallucination.
  • (n.) Hence: Anything agreeably fascinating and charning; enchantment; witchery; glamour.
  • (n.) A sensation originated by some external object, but so modified as in any way to lead to an erroneous perception; as when the rolling of a wagon is mistaken for thunder.
  • (n.) A plain, delicate lace, usually of silk, used for veils, scarfs, dresses, etc.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) By using various colors, it is possible to tattoo a nipple-areola complex onto the breast that will have an illusion of projection.
  • (2) Apnea monitoring did not prevent, and in fact perpetrated the illusion of SIDS in this infant.
  • (3) Pope Francis’s no-longer-secret meeting in Washington DC with anti-gay activist Kim Davis, the controversial Kentucky county clerk who was briefly jailed over her refusal to issue same-sex marriage licenses in compliance with state law, leaves LGBT people with no illusions about the Pope’s stance on equal rights for us, despite his call for inclusiveness.
  • (4) Cocaine produces simple hallucinations, PCP can produce complex hallucinations analogous to a paranoid psychosis, while LSD produces a combination of hallucinations, pseudohallucinations and illusions.
  • (5) They must be kept secret because publication would destroy the illusion of a royal neutrality no one in power thinks exists any more.
  • (6) They impose the illusion of order on a chaotic life; they cement our place within and commitment to a collective.
  • (7) The preliminary experiments described here suggest that tilt aftereffects and illusions induced by projected slides of tilted real-object scenes have angular functions similar to that induced by a line grating.
  • (8) These variants, which yielded a robust illusion, included dihedral angles in place of the arrowheads of the classical pattern.
  • (9) During vibration of the depressor muscles with the mandible in its rest position the subjects underestimated an opening movement, but fixation of the mandible caused no illusions of movement.
  • (10) Stimuli were circular beams of light projected on screens (Delboef type of illusion).
  • (11) The director John Hillcoat and I were under no illusions.
  • (12) When the shaft is shortened and reaches neither of the vertices of the two pairs of wings, a reversed Müller-Lyer illusion is observed: a shaft between inward-pointing wings appears to be longer than a shaft between the outward-pointing wings.
  • (13) An illusion is something done one way that looks the other, like if you put a mirror in front of a pencil so the pencil looks like it's somewhere else.
  • (14) The subjects were asked to relate dreams, thoughts, or other mental illusions experienced during G-LOC episodes.
  • (15) While Yarmolenko stayed quiet, Stepanenko left no illusions as to his interpretation.
  • (16) The count of publications on geometric-optical illusions and the bibliography of extant books on the topic are brought up to date.
  • (17) The illusion is of watching a prima ballerina dancing only for you.
  • (18) Is Sisi’s UK visit going to fill my car with gas?’ A lot of people are increasingly disenchanted with the government, simply because it is failing to live up to its own illusions of grandeur.” Among the disenchanted are thousands of workers in the critical textiles sector who are striking over pay and conditions.
  • (19) Four experiments were conducted to investigate the role of "large" squares on the occurrence of assimilation and contrast in the Baldwin illusion.
  • (20) It creates a dangerous illusion that simply by reducing sugar intake, one can eradicate obesity.