No matter if you're in school or well past your days in English class, figures of speech are used every day in our lives. From songs and television shows to conversations and advertisements, we often ...

Source: Francesco Bini/Wikimedia Commons/CC BY-SA 4.0 The most famous of all allegories is the Allegory of the Cave, in which Plato compares unphilosophical people to prisoners who, having spent their ...

Ibn Arabi explains that Nizam, representing divinity, cannot be understood through orthodox dogma but through love alone. Her solitary chamber, he clarifies, is actually the human heart. He also ...

"Narcissus" by Caravaggio (c. 1598). Source: Wikimedia Commons/Public Domain What is an allegory? An allegory (Greek, "a speaking about something else") is a complete and cohesive narrative, for ...

As someone who spends a good deal of time writing, I’m generally fond of language and literary devices as part of the science-communication toolkit. Tricks like analogies, similes, metaphors, and all ...

John Winthrop’s “city upon a hill” language wasn’t meant to puff up his hearers with pride but to send a chill down their spines. Ronald Reagan understood the power of metaphor. From his stirring ...