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Literary Devices
Definition of Allusion
In literature, an allusion is an unexplained reference to someone or something outside of the text. Writers commonly allude to other literary works, famous individuals, historical events, or philosophical ideas... read full definition
In literature, an allusion is an unexplained reference to someone or something outside of the text. Writers commonly allude to other literary works, famous individuals... read full definition
In literature, an allusion is an unexplained reference to someone or something outside of the text. Writers commonly allude to... read full definition
Volume 1, Book 1: A Just Man
Explanation and Analysis—Formidable Abysses:
The story sets up the moral compass and values of the Bishop with allusions to philosophers and poets. Though these historical figures pose formidable and unanswerable questions, the Bishop closes his mind to such vast reflections:
Thus he shut himself up, he lived there, he was absolutely satisfied with it, leaving on one side the prodigious questions that attract and terrify, the fathomless perspectives of abstraction, […] formidable abysses, which Lucretius, Manou, Saint Paul, Dante, contemplate with eyes flashing lightning, which seems by its steady gaze on the infinite to cause stars to blaze forth there.
Volume 1, Book 3: In the Year 1817
Explanation and Analysis—A Casus Belli:
When Tholomyes has a little too much to drink at a public house, he begins to orate at the party about the frivolity of women. Tholomyes uses hyperboles and allusions to bolster his point about women:
Unlock with LitCharts A+In love there are no friends. Everywhere where there is a pretty woman hostility is open. No quarter, war to the death! A pretty woman is a casus belli; a pretty woman is flagrant misdemeanor. All the invasions of history have been determined by petticoats. Woman is man’s right. Romulus carried off the Sabines; William carried off the Saxon women; Caesar carried off the Roman women. The man who is not loved soars like a vulture over the mistresses of other men; and for my own part, to all those unfortunate men who are widowers, I throw the sublime proclamation of Bonaparte to the army of Italy: ‘Soldiers, you are in need of everything; the enemy has it.’
Related Themes:
Volume 5, Book 1: The War Between Four Walls
Explanation and Analysis—Don Quixote and Leonidas:
Though the narrator admits that peace is preferable to war, they do commend revolutionaries for their commitment to the cause in the face of death. With allusions to classical Spanish literature and Greek history, the narrator praises the revolutionaries:
Unlock with LitCharts A+We may succeed. We are few in number, we have a whole army arrayed against us; but we are defending right, the natural law, the sovereignty of each one over himself from which no abdication is possible, justice and truth, and in case of need, we die like the three hundred Spartans. We do not think of Don Quixote but of Leonidas. And we march straight before us, and once pledged, we do not draw back, and we rush onward with head held low, cherishing as our hope an unprecedented victory, revolution completed, progress set free again, the aggrandizement of the human race, universal deliverance.
Related Themes:
