Allegory in Anglo Saxon period: tradition and inheritance

An allegory is a narrative in verse or prose with double meaning: surface meaning and under the surface meaning. The extant poems of this genre written in the Anglo Saxon period include The Panther, The Whale and The Phoenix , in which the characters are all animals and birds. The tradition of allegory can be traced back to ancient Greek, but in the case of Anglo Saxon period, the tradition can be found in the works of Dante, Langland, Bunyan, Swift and George Orwell. Our Chinese literature also sees the allegorical use both in the classic and modern literary creation, such as poems by Li He, Li Shang yin and Guo Mo ruo, and Wu Cheng ens Pilgrimage to the West . It is very likely that Guo Mo rous Nirvana of Phoenix was written under influence of the Anglo Saxon allegory The Phoenix .