Describe the use and importance of allegory in English literature.

Allegory is often used to portray political and religious ideas which are sometimes subversive. Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels, for example, has a section in which two countries are at war because they disagree regarding which end of an egg should be broken first. This is a thinly-veiled allegory of Protestant England's ongoing wars with Catholic France, and implies that such disagreements (over religion) are just as silly as fighting over which end of the egg...

Allegory is often used to portray political and religious ideas which are sometimes subversive. Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels, for example, has a section in which two countries are at war because they disagree regarding which end of an egg should be broken first. This is a thinly-veiled allegory of Protestant England's ongoing wars with Catholic France, and implies that such disagreements (over religion) are just as silly as fighting over which end of the egg to break first. George Orwell's Animal Farm is a political allegory of the Russian Revolution and the Stalin era which followed. He intended to point out the natural progression of communism and Stalin's abuses of power (when he wrote it, Britain was still in alliance with the Soviet Union and many Brits admired Stalin).