National Allegory

Let me define allegory first.
An allegory is a story or visual image with a second distinct meaning that is partially hidden behind its literal meaning. In a written narrative, allegory involves a continuous parallel between two (or more) levels of meaning in a story, so that its people and events correspond to their equivalents in a system of ideas or a chain of events external to the tale.

Okay, now an example of allegory: I didn't have that many notes from lecture of what national allegory was but I do remember that Professor Mufti said that there was an allegorical moment in "Untouchable." He said that the fact that Bakha wants and tries to emulate the British soldiers represents (the literal meaning) him wanting to separate himself from his peers. And it also expresses the larger concern of India as a nation and how parts of it express a desire for westernization.

National allegory: Since we have been discussing in class how western ways of writing literature have and continue to be a dominating force in eastern countries, it follows that almost every piece of nonwestern literature has an underlying "national" allegory, no matter what the topic of the story is, because the style in which the piece is being written is in a form of western literature writing techniques. So since these nations are producing there own works of national literature, they are writing or structuring their pieces in western literary techniques, like the novel, and thereby (whether intentionally or not) are producing a work of national allegory.

If you have any other notes on this, feel free to correct me or add on to this post :)