How do you identify allusions within a short story or a long prose easily? Any tips?

Answer 1

Allusions are words and phrases that reference an object, event, person, place, or even another literary work.

There are two types of allusions: internal and external:

1. An internal allusion is reference that hints about something that occurred earlier in the text.
2. Example: A wedding takes place in Chapter 3; in a later chapter, a character talks about the wedding as "the big day."

1. An external allusion is an indirect reference to an object, event, person, place, or another literary work. It does not clearly explain the reference, because it is assumed the reader will understand.
2. Examples:
3. Sword of Damocles hanging over one's head (from Greek mythology; means someone is in a position where they are always in danger or always under threat of something bad happening to them).
4. They're a Judas (from the Christian Bible; meaning betrayal or a traitor).
5. Wearing a scarlet letter (from Nathaniel Hawthorne's "The Scarlet Letter," about a Puritan-era woman who committed adultery and had to wear a red letter A for adultery on all of her dresses. This is an allusion to a woman who has cheated on their spouse).

(External) allusions can be challenging to identify and understand if the reader is unfamiliar with them, their meaning, and significance. Here are some clues to spot when looking for an external allusions:

1. Look for capitalized words that don't fit in with the rest of the text, or don't make sense.
2. Example: That printer is so old, it's antediluvian. This is a biblical reference to Noah's ark and the time before the flood. In this sentence, it's used to exaggerate the age of an outdated printer.
3. Example: The coach met his Waterloo when his team lost the championship game by a score of 54-0. This is a historical reference to Emperor Napoleon's crushing defeat in the Battle of Waterloo.
4. Google terms that don't make sense, and connect the meaning of those terms and connect them with the events of the text, the time period the text takes place in, and what world events were going on at that time.
5. A literary allusion using the words Apollo 1 to describe a tragedy involving spacecraft or aircraft is a reference that would be understood by Americans of a certain age, people interested in space travel, history buffs, etc. Apollo 1 references the 1967 fire of NASA's Apollo 1 capsule that killed 3 astronauts. Someone from another country or born in the 1990s or later may not be familiar with Apollo 1.
6. A literary allusion to Black Monday can refer to one of two stock market crashes: 1929, which started the Great Depression, or in 1987, when the global markets crashed.
7. Perform an online search for "list of literary allusions" for compilations of literary allusions and their meanings.