Alegoria Benjaminiana

Abstract

Focused on showing the presence of allegory as an interpretive resource, this article mentions its permanence in modern times from a new analytical parameter. Committed since Classical Antiquity with the rhetoric and the rules followed by the orators, it was like a displaced metaphor, striving for clarity and appropriateness of speech. That purpose was transfigured throughout the Middle Ages, when its use was linked to decency and morality, a convention which was changed in Romanticism, when it met its demise, subdued by the symbol. From the texts proposed by Walter Benjamin, its existence was perceived as a resource illuminating the aesthetic universe in the light of social times, presented as a figure of speech tied to the historical context. Reflecting the spirit of the times, we adopt in this article a dialectical perspective as a methodological that more accurately illustrates the contours assumed by allegory in modernity. With the light of experiences in a changing world of insecurity in its own values,it is now envisioned as an analytical category indicting of fragmented representation of a diffuse and unstable society, allowing us to understand the scope and limits of literature as a vehicle in critical perception of reality.