ABSTRACT
Defined in accordance with its etymology, the elusive term allegory signifies ‘other speaking.’ During the long period extending from the rise of allegory in the first Christian centuries up to Spenser’s own time, ‘other speaking’ can be defined more usefully as the employment of objective phenomena of the everyday world to describe the otherwise imperceptible and thus indescribable features of certain ‘other’ worlds, the transcendental world of the spirit and the closely related interior world of the mental, moral, and emotional life.
