Allegorist

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. An individual who specializes in writing or analyzing narratives that use symbolic elements to communicate moral and philosophical messages
2. A creator or interpreter of stories that utilize metaphorical characters and events to express profound themes and ideas
3. A person engaged in crafting or studying stories with hidden meanings and symbolic figures that convey deeper moral or philosophical concepts

Etymology: "Allegorist" is a learned borrowing from Latin "allegorista," a term that reached English by way of the classical tradition of reading one story as a veiled account of something else. On the surface it looks like "allegory" with the suffix "-ist" added, meaning someone who practices allegory, and that is essentially how it was built. The word's core, "allegory," comes from Greek "allēgoria," roughly "speaking otherwise," from "allos" (other) and "agoreuein" (to speak in the assembly). The idea is that a narrative says one thing on its surface while meaning another beneath it. An allegorist is therefore a writer who deliberately works in that double layer, building characters and events that stand for moral, political or spiritual ideas.

Synonyms: symbolist, metaphorist, narrator, storyteller, writer