Allegory Amongst the Inklings

Abstract

This chapter surveys the account the Oxford Inklings gave of allegory and the use they made of it, as well as analysing the distinctions they made between strictly allegorical writing, and a higher form, which they described as mythopoeic writing. Whereas allegory is strictly speaking an extended metaphor in which they author predecides an exact equivalence between the disembodied truths they wish to convey and the allegorical personae with which they clothe them, mythopoeia works at a deeper mythic level in which images, personae, and plot convey multiple truths at once, sometimes more truths than the author consciously intends, and is continually suggestive of incipient allegories, or fresh applications in the mind of the reader. The chapter covers the work of C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, Owen Barfield, and Charles Williams and comments on Dorothy Sayers’s work on Dante, inspired by Charles Williams.