Allusion: Study Guide (English Literature 5.5)

Some phrases in poems do double work. A single name, a single place, a half-remembered story can bring a whole set of associations into the poem without the poet having to explain them. That technique is allusion. This topic teaches you to recognise allusions, to say what they bring with them, and to explain what they do to the poem’s meaning.

What an allusion is

An allusion is an indirect reference to something outside the text. The course lists the main kinds:

• literary works, including myths and sacred texts (a figure from a myth, a story from scripture);
• other works of art, including paintings and music;
• people, places or events outside the text (a historical king, a battle, a discovery).

An allusion does not explain its source. It trusts the reader to recognise the reference, or to sense that a reference is being made, and to bring the associations along. A name like Apollo carries poetry, the sun and artistic inspiration; Cortez carries exploration, conquest and the awe of seeing a new ocean. By using the name, the poet imports those associations into a few words.

An allusion is not a quotation, which repeats another text’s words openly, and it is not just a clever extra. A well-chosen allusion changes what the passage means: it adds weight, offers a comparison, or sets up an irony.

What to say when you explain one

Treat an allusion like a comparison with something outside the poem. Four moves help:

1. Reference. Identify what is referred to (a myth, a person, an event), in a short phrase.
2. Associations. Say which associations matter here: grandeur, loss, discovery, endurance, doom.
3. Link. Show how those associations connect to what is happening in the poem.
4. Effect. Explain what the allusion does to the speaker’s attitude or to the poem’s meaning. Does it elevate, undercut, deepen or ironise?

If you do not recognise a reference, say what kind of reference it appears to be and what signals it gives (a capitalised name, an unusual place, a title); then focus on how it works in the lines around it.

Worked example 1: allusions that raise a reading experience into discovery

John Keats’s sonnet “On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer” (1816) describes the speaker’s experience of reading George Chapman’s English translation of Homer.

Much have I travell’d in the realms of gold And many goodly states and kingdoms seen; Round many western islands have I been Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold. Oft of one wide expanse had I been told That deep-brow’d Homer ruled as his demesne: Yet did I never breathe its pure serene Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold: Then felt I like some watcher of the skies When a new planet swims into his ken; Or like stout Cortez, when with eagle eyes He stared at the Pacific—and all his men Look’d at each other with a wild surmise— Silent, upon a peak in Darien.

Step 1, reference. Several allusions appear. Apollo is a Greek god, patron of poetry and of the sun. Homer is the ancient Greek poet of the Iliad and Odyssey. Chapman is the Elizabethan translator whose version of Homer the speaker has just read. The “watcher of the skies” alludes to an astronomer discovering a planet. Stout Cortez alludes to the Spanish explorer, and the Pacific and Darien to the first European sight of that ocean. (Cortez is a famous slip: history gives the sighting to a different explorer, Balboa. The slip does not damage the poem’s use of the type of event.)

Step 2, associations. Apollo and Homer: poetry at its highest, an ancient and sacred realm. The astronomer and the explorer: the thrill of discovery, of seeing something unprecedented and vast.

Step 3, link. The speaker has “travell’d in the realms of gold”, a metaphor for reading literature, and has been told of Homer’s “wide expanse”. When he finally reads Chapman, he compares his feeling to the sudden sight of a new planet and a new ocean. The allusions make a private experience of reading as dramatic as a historic discovery.

Step 4, effect. The allusions raise reading to the level of exploration. The images of the “new planet” and the Pacific build in scale, and the closing picture of explorers who “look’d at each other with a wild surmise— / Silent, upon a peak” shows wonder that is too great for speech. The effect is to present great literature as a world to be discovered, with the speaker’s own sense of awe as the proof.

A model sentence. Keats alludes to an astronomer and to “stout Cortez” at the Pacific to turn the speaker’s first reading of Homer into a moment of discovery, so that wonder, in the silent “wild surmise”, becomes the poem’s measure of great poetry.

Worked example 2: an allusion that sets up irony

Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “Ozymandias” (1818) tells of a traveller who describes a ruined statue.

I met a traveller from an antique land Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand Half sunk, a shatter’d visage lies, whose frown And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamp’d on these lifeless things, The hand that mock’d them and the heart that fed; And on the pedestal these words appear: “My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!” Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Step 1, reference. Ozymandias is the Greek name for an ancient Egyptian pharaoh, usually identified with Ramesses II. The poem alludes to a historical ruler and to the real tradition of colossal royal statues. The phrase “king of kings” echoes the titles of ancient monarchs.

Step 2, associations. The name brings immense power, empire, monumental building and the confidence that a ruler’s works will last for ever.

Step 3, link. The statue’s inscription invites those who see it to “Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!” Yet the poem shows only “two vast and trunkless legs of stone” and a “shatter’d visage”, with “Nothing beside” and endless sand. The grand allusion is placed beside the physical evidence of ruin.

Step 4, effect. The allusion creates irony. The name and the title promise permanent power; the scene shows that power has vanished and that only the sculptor’s reading of the king’s “sneer of cold command” survives. The reader is led to reflect that human pride and empire are temporary, and the final line leaves the desert as the only remaining ruler: “The lone and level sands stretch far away”.

A model sentence. Shelley’s allusion to the pharaoh Ozymandias and his boast “king of kings” summons the associations of absolute power so that the surrounding “colossal wreck” and “level sands” can turn that power into irony.

Four things an allusion can do

The same method gives different results depending on how the allusion sits against the rest of the poem. The short examples below were written by Marlbridge for practice.

Function	What it does	Example line
Elevates	Gives an ordinary moment mythic weight	“She climbed the hill with the basket like a woman bringing fire”
Deepens	Adds a layer of meaning from the source	“He fell asleep in the garden, and woke a little less innocent”
Contrasts	Sets the great against the small	“He bore his small disappointment like Atlas”
Ironises	Lets a grand reference expose a smaller truth	“King of kings, said the sign above the shuttered shop”

When you write about an allusion, decide which of these it is doing, and say so. Keep in mind that one allusion may do more than one. Shelley’s Ozymandias both inflates the king and undercuts him, which is why the poem’s irony is so strong. Keats’s references to Apollo, Homer and Cortez mainly elevate. Naming the function turns “this is an allusion to a pharaoh” into an interpretation: “this allusion inflates the boast so that the ruin can undercut it”.

Notice also what the poem does not explain. An allusion works because the poem leaves the story untold. If you spend a paragraph retelling the source, you are doing the poet’s job twice and not yet doing yours, which is to say what the borrowed associations do in this poem, at this moment.

Common misconceptions

• “An allusion is just a famous name.” It is a reference that imports associations; the work is in saying which ones matter here.
• “If I don’t recognise it, I can’t write about it.” Describe the signals the poem gives and explain how it works in context.
• “An allusion always praises its source.” It may elevate, mock, contrast or deepen.
• “An allusion is a quotation.” A quotation repeats; an allusion refers indirectly.
• “The allusion explains itself.” The poem expects the reader to link the reference to the situation; you must make the link explicit.
• “Allusion is only to literature.” The course includes art, music, people, places and events.

Where this leads

Topic 5.6 (study guide) turns the Unit’s figurative skills into writing: a thesis and commentary for a poetry analysis. Practise allusion with the practice questions, review the revision notes and tick off the checklist. Allusion returns in Topic 8.5.