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Allegory
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
The Custom House
Explanation and Analysis—Mosses from an Old Manse:
Hawthorne opens "The Custom House" with an allusion to a previous work of his own, Mosses from an Old Manse:
It is a little remarkable, that—though disinclined to talk overmuch of myself and my affairs at the fireside, and to my personal friends—an autobiographical impulse should twice in my life have taken possession of me, in addressing the public. The first time was three or four years since, when I favored the reader—inexcusably, and for no earthly reason, that either the indulgent reader or the intrusive author could imagine—with a description of my way of life in the deep quietude of an Old Manse.
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Explanation and Analysis—Headless Horseman:
In "The Custom House," the narrator describes how he was ousted from his position as Surveyor. To make sense of what happened, he uses a simile alluding to Washington Irving's "Legend of Sleepy Hollow":
Unlock with LitCharts A+Meanwhile the press had taken up my affair, and kept me, for a week or two, careering through the public prints, in my decapitated state, like Irving's Headless Horseman; ghastly and grim, and longing to be buried, as a politically dead man ought. So much for my figurative self. The real human being, all this time, with his head safely on his shoulders, had brought himself to the comfortable conclusion that everything was for the best; and, making an investment in ink, paper, and steel-pens, had opened his long-disused writing-desk, and was again a literary man.
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Chapter 8
Explanation and Analysis—John the Baptist:
In Chapter 8, the narrator uses an allusion to the Bible to describe Governor Bellingham:
Unlock with LitCharts A+The wide circumference of an elaborate ruff, beneath his gray beard, in the antiquated fashion of King James's reign, caused his head to look not a little like that of John the Baptist in a charger.
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Chapter 10
Explanation and Analysis—Pilgrim's Progress:
In Chapter 10, the narrator describes "the leech and his patient," or Chillingworth and his life-sucking psychological torture of Dimmesdale. An allusion to John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress allows the narrator to emphasize how completely Chillingworth turns Dimmesdale's home into a house of horror:
Unlock with LitCharts A+Sometimes, a light glimmered out of the physician's eyes, burning blue and ominous, like the reflection of a furnace, or, let us say, like one of those gleams of ghastly fire that darted from Bunyan's awful doorway in the hillside, and quivered on the pilgrim's face. The soil where this dark miner was working had perchance shown indications that encouraged him.
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