Political Allegory Through Space and Time

By Nick Pecora

Political satire or political allegory is a literary strategy that has been used since ancient times to indirectly comment on political figures or issues. In modern times, we would perhaps think of political satire as something we would see in The Onion or on Saturday Night Live, but most political satire throughout history has been produced as literature. This exhibit will explore four primary texts alongisde Antigone that demonstrate the use of this strategy across space and time: Divine Comedy (Divina Commedia) by Dante Alighieri, The Dialogue in Hell between Machiavelli and Montesquieu (Dialogue aux enfers entre Machiavel et Montesquieu ou la politique de Machiavel au XIXe siècle) by Maurice Joly, The Crab Cannery Ship (Kani Kōsen) by Takiji Kobayashi, and The Crucible by Arthur Miller.

These texts vary in time period, setting, region of origin, and subject, but they are all connected in that they aim to convey a political message to a particular audience with such tact as to ensure their message is attractive and palatable to that audience. To accomplish this, these authors often chose to tell stories featuring settings or events that serve as allegories for the broader political issue or figure they intend to criticize.

In this exhibit, points on the map will mark relevant locations to each of these texts, with each text being assigned a different color map point as a means of grouping those points together. The colors are as follows:

All red points are related to Antigone.

All yellow points are related to the Divine Comedy

All purple points are related to The Dialogue in Hell

All green points are related to The Crab Cannery Ship

All blue points are related to The Crucible

Use the waypoints on the right side of the screen to jump to a map view that contains all the points relevant to a given text. For example, clicking onThe Crucible will cause the screen to display a map of the Northeast United States, featuring the points relevant to The Crucible.