The Allegorical Impulse

Allegory is a cognitive action in which people apply a metaphoric mode of understanding to situations and discourse that typically does not contain metaphorical language per se. My claim is that allegoresis is not a specialized mode of interpretation, but a fundamental human impulse to draw diverse connections between concrete and more abstract experience. I describe several empirical findings from psycholinguistics, anthropology, and literature that demonstrate people's facility to be allegorical, including individuals' consistent ability to see allegory in various texts and real-life situations. I conclude by arguing that allegory is cognitive, not as an abstract, purely mental stance or strategy, but because it relies on embodied simulations for its expression and understanding, much as do many other aspect of cognitive behavior.