Allegory, from the Greek ἀλληγορία (allegoría) "figuratively", is a literary figure or artistic theme, which aims to represent an idea using human forms, animals, and / or everyday objects.
The allegory aims to give an image to what has no image, so that it can be better understood by the generality. Drawing the abstract, making "visible" what is only conceptual, obeys a didactic intention. Thus, a blind woman with a scale is an allegory of justice, and a skeleton with a scythe is an allegory of death.
It is also called an allegory to a broader rhetorical procedure, in that it creates an extensive and subdivided system of metaphorical images that represents a more complex thought or a real human experience, and in that sense can constitute whole works, such as the Roman de la Rose by Jean de Meung; the allegory is then transformed into a cognitive instrument and is associated with analogy or analogical reasoning.