an oblique but perhaps not irrelevant association on this subject:
"But some people will say that all this may be very fine, but that they
cannot understand [The Faerie Queene] on account of the allegory. They
are afraid of the allegory, as if they thought it would bite them: they
look at it as a child looks at a painted drgon, and think it will strangle
them in its shining folds. This is very idle. If they do not meddle with
the allegory, the allegory will not meddle with them."
William Hazlitt, Lectures on the English Poets (page 38 in the Everyman
edition, London: Dent, 1910).
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