of interpretation and only sometimes of original artistic intention. Like allegorical stories, allegorical poetry has two meanings – a literal meaning and a symbolic meaning. Some unique specimens of allegory can be found in the following works: Edmund Spenser – The Faerie Queene: The several knights in the poem actually stand for several virtues. William Shakespeare – The Tempest: an allegory of the civilisation/barbarism binary as it pertains to colonialism John Bunyan – The Pilgrim's Progress: The journey of the protagonists Christian and Evangelist symbolises the ascension of the soul from earth to Heaven. Nathaniel Hawthorne – Young Goodman Brown: The Devil's Staff symbolises defiance of God. The characters' names, such as Goodman and Faith, ironically serve as paradox in the conclusion of the story. Nathaniel Hawthorne – The Scarlet Letter: The letter represents self-reliance from America's Puritan and conformity. George Orwell – Animal Farm: The pigs stand for political figures of the Russian Revolution. László Krasznahorkai - The Melancholy of Resistance and the film Werckmeister Harmonies: It uses a circus to describe an occupying dysfunctional government. Edgar Allan Poe – The Masque of the Red Death: The story can be read as an allegory for humans' inability to escape death. Arthur Miller – The Crucible: The Salem witch trials are thought to be an allegory for McCarthyism and the blacklisting of Communists in the United States of America. Shel Silverstein – The Giving Tree: The book has been described as an allegory about relationships; between parents and children, between romantic partners, or between humans and the environment. Art Some elaborate and successful specimens of allegory are to be found in the following works, arranged in approximate chronological order: Ambrogio Lorenzetti – Allegoria del Buono e Cattivo Governo e loro Effetti in Città e Campagna (c. 1338–1339) Sandro Botticelli – Primavera (c. 1482) Albrecht Dürer – Melencolia I (1514) Bronzino – Venus, Cupid, Folly and Time (c. 1545) The English School's – "Allegory of Queen Elizabeth" (c. 1610) Artemisia Gentileschi – Allegory of Inclination (c. 1620), An Allegory of Peace and the Arts under the English Crown (1638); Self-Portrait as the Allegory of Painting (c. 1638–39) The Feast of Herod with the Beheading of St John the Baptist by Bartholomeus Strobel is also an allegory of Europe in the time of the Thirty Years War, with portraits of many leading political and military figures. Jan Vermeer – Allegory of Painting