Allegory, a figurative mode of representation, in which a subject of a higher spiritual order is described in terms of that of a lower which resembles it in properties and circumstances, the principal subject being so kept out of view that we are left to construe the drift of it from the resemblance of the secondary to the primary subject.
Definition taken from The Nuttall Encyclopædia, edited by the Reverend James Wood (1907)
Allegorical interpretation * Allegri