Allegory and allegorical songs?

Subject: Allegory and allegorical songs?
From: The Shambles
Date: 16 Aug 00 - 05:49 AM

I stumbled over this, from JRR Tokien, in his forward to 'The Lord of the Rings'.

"But I cordially dislike allegory in all its manifestations, and always have done so since I grew old and wary enough to detect its presence. I much prefer history, true or feigned, with its varied applicability to the thought and applicability to the thought and experience of readers. I think that many confuse 'applicability' with 'allegory'; but the one resides in the freedom of he the reader, and the other in the purposed domination of the author.

I was also wondering if there were examples of songs that were entirely allegorical as well as those containing allegorical references?

Subject: RE: Allegory and allegorical songs?
From: CarolC
Date: 16 Aug 00 - 06:09 AM

The Shambles-

First of all, I want to say that I stumbled across an old thread in which you made quite a few references to Douglas Adams material. You're a very funny person.

As far as allegory and song is concerned, I think you have a wealth of material to choose from there. A lot of folk music started out as allegories for political or societal situations when those who were singing the songs could be punished, even by death, if they sang or talked openly about what they were thinking.

This also applies, interestingly enough, to a number of Mother Goose rhymes. I think Humpty Dumpty is an example of this.

I think it would be accurate to say that the period of slavery here in the U.S., was probably a fertile spawning-ground for allegorical songs.

I wonder if, when Tolkien wrote that, he was specifically aiming at his friend, C.S. Lewis, who seems to have been particularly fond of using allegory in his works.

Best regards, Carol

Subject: RE: Allegory and allegorical songs?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 16 Aug 00 - 06:13 AM

I was looking for that quote, because in this recent thread the term "allegory" was being used where "analogy" was really more appropriate. And the distinction between the two is quite important.

An allegory is an artificial constriction, where the events and characters in a story are manipulated to fit the events and characters in a different real-life situation. I can see why Tolkien disliked it when people clumsily tried to explain Middle Earth in that kind of way.

Any number of songs are applicable in the way Tolkien uses the term here. Maybe all good songs are. (The example I gave on that other thread was the Mary Ellen Carter, which isn't only or even primarily about boats, but about an attitude to life.)

But allegory as such? I suppose you could say that songs like The Seeds of Love and The Thrashing Machine are - but maybe the term really applies when you get into more extended narrative.

Subject: RE: Allegory and allegorical songs?
From: Jeri
Date: 16 Aug 00 - 11:59 AM

Does double entendre count? All those birds in bushes?

I always thought the Mary Ellen Carter was about a ship, but Stan worked in a moral. I'll admit the moral is probably the reason for the song, though. He never said what happened when they tried to raise the ship - it was a complete failure from what I understand.

Isn't "Froggy Went A-Courtin'" and all its versions an allegory?

Subject: RE: Allegory and allegorical songs?
From: GUEST,Scabby Doug (Me Like Cookies)
Date: 16 Aug 00 - 12:52 PM

How about Fairport's "Bonny Black Hare"?

Cheers

Subject: RE: Allegory and allegorical songs?
From: Kim C
Date: 16 Aug 00 - 03:10 PM

I thought Lord of the Rings WAS an allegory. But then, I was but a wee lassie when I tried to read The Hobbit.

Do those Jacobite secret code songs count? I sort of like My Bonny Moorhen.

Subject: RE: Allegory and allegorical songs?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 16 Aug 00 - 04:27 PM

What would make Lord of the Rings an allegory would be if to understand it you had to get hold of a key -"Sauron is really Stalin and Saruman is really Hitler and the Ring is the Atom Bomb" and that kind of nonsense.

And there people who tried to talk along those lines, and there probably still are, and it really got on Tolkien's wick, because it devalued the story as such. And he very specifically dismisses such interpretations (and he points out that if he'd been writing anything along those lines relating to troubles of this century the plot would have worked out very differently, and disastrously so).

I think he went a bit too far in rejecting the idea of allegories as a valid type of stortytelling, because there are examples where it works well - notably The Pilgrim's Progress. But even that works best when the story takes over, and the characters come to life, and the allegory is pushed into the background. (And the same goes for CS Lewis's reowrking of that, The Pilgrim's Regress.)

Applicability, or finding analogies in a story, that's a different matter, as he said. And all stories are applicable, or they wouldn't be stories.)

And I think there is a distinction between the use of figurative language and extended metaphors and allegory as such. Songs about sexual encounters in terms of hunting wild game or agricultural machinery, or songs addressed to Ireland in the form of a woman, yes, they are extended metaphors and figurative language, and they make more sense when you know the coded references - but for true allegory I think you'd need a more extended and complicated narrative than you get in most folk songs.

There are ballads which have that kind of extended and complicated narrative structure - but I can't think of any which are allegorical in their nature. They probably exist though.

Subject: RE: Allegory and allegorical songs?
From: Bev and Jerry
Date: 16 Aug 00 - 09:36 PM

Jeri:

Froggy Went A-Courtin' is an allegory. The mouse represents Queen Elizabeth I and the frog her suitor of French descent. So is the Carrion Crow which represents Charles II (see recent thread on Cromwell for more history).

Our favorite allegory is Revolutionary Tea which portrays England as the "Island Queen" and "The Old Lady" while the colonies are referred to as "Her daughter who lives over the sea". We frequently do this song as part of a fifth grade American History program and we usually ask if anyone knows what an allegory is. Onece a fifth grader raised his hand and said, "Isn't he the vice president of the United States?"

Bev and Jerry

Subject: RE: Allegory and allegorical songs?
From: Lox
Date: 16 Aug 00 - 11:43 PM

I've just finished reading "The master and Margarita" by Mikhail Bulgakov. It is a genuine allegory written during and about, Stalins regime. It is also completely insane and therefore highly recommended.

I grew up on the Lord of the Rings, and I have found many of the sentiments enclosed within its pages to be "applicable" to everyday life.

Poor old tolkien was cursed with being a good writer, capable of creating believable, almost tangible characters out of comparatively wooden mythology.

I had never before, and will never again be able to empathise with or be afraid of an elf or an orc. Gollum is a character who I know well - so well in fact that I can see elements of him in all sorts of people, likewise with frodo, Aragorn... etc...

I say "good old Tolkien", as he managed - without intent or malice - to cause people to ask serious questions, and exercise their minds a bit.

His quote of course (post#1) is the "coup de grace" however, as it ends public bickering and forces people to think for themselves, there being no further room for speculation about his intentions.

Tolkien was pretty fuckin' cool eh?

Subject: RE: Allegory and allegorical songs?
From: CarolC
Date: 17 Aug 00 - 03:50 AM

One of a kind.

Subject: RE: Allegory and allegorical songs?
From: Sorcha
Date: 17 Aug 00 - 03:59 AM

Aren't most (I say most, not all...) of the Child Ballads allegorical on some level? I guess I mean , Universal Themes............maybe most Folk is Allegorcial, uh oh, back to What Is Folk?........not going there. Thank You, thank you very much.

Subject: RE: Allegory and allegorical songs?
From: Penny S.
Date: 17 Aug 00 - 04:59 AM

In "Marrow Bones, English Folk Songs from the Hammond and Gardiner Mss." EFDS Publications Ltd, 1965, there is a song called The Bold Fisherman, collected from George Roper, Charlton St. Mary, Dorset, in 1905. A woman out walking meets a fisherman who turns out to be a lord, rather like the gypsy stories. In the notes, (ed. Frank Purslow) it is suggested that the story refers to Christ fishing for souls, from the work of Lucy Broadwood and Anne Gilchrist comparing it with a medieval hymn. Which would make it allegorical, if the secularisation were to have intended to keep the meaning of the original.

Penny

Subject: RE: Allegory and allegorical songs?
From: GUEST
Date: 17 Aug 00 - 10:41 AM

Great Thread!

Subject: RE: Allegory and allegorical songs?
From: Art Thieme
Date: 17 Aug 00 - 11:12 AM

Al Gorey is the Democratic candidate for president !

Art Thieme

Subject: RE: Allegory and allegorical songs?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 17 Aug 00 - 06:24 PM

I said "Me pretty creole girl,
me money here's no good.
If it weren't for the allegories
I'd sleep out in the wood."

Subject: RE: Allegory and allegorical songs?
From: The Shambles
Date: 17 Aug 00 - 07:56 PM

That song was known to us as. 'The alligator song'.

Subject: RE: Allegory and allegorical songs?
From: CarolC
Date: 17 Aug 00 - 08:07 PM

Allegories, alligators, who can tell the difference?

Subject: RE: Allegory and allegorical songs?
From: Art Thieme
Date: 17 Aug 00 - 08:19 PM

That's a crock !

Art

Subject: RE: Allegory and allegorical songs?
From: GUEST
Date: 17 Aug 00 - 10:00 PM

Well OK man... (cayman)????.............I'll get my coat.

Subject: RE: Allegory and allegorical songs?
From: CarolC
Date: 17 Aug 00 - 10:11 PM

Check ya later.......

Subject: RE: Allegory and allegorical songs?
From: Lox
Date: 17 Aug 00 - 10:16 PM

For some reason I came up as "Guest" there. I'll just check to make sure that I've got a cookie for my bedtime snack.

(Lox)