Interpretări și funcții ale alegoriei în scrierile lui Walter Benjamin

This study examines the relationship between symbol and allegory by tracing the intersections, parallels, and oppositions established between these two tropes in Walter Benjamin’s theoretical writings and literary works. Benjamin’s The Origin of German Tragic Drama (1928), originally submitted as his habilitation thesis, redefines allegory as a rhetorical practice subversively embedded in fiction rather than merely an aesthetic category associated with seventeenth-century tragedy. After outlining a concise history of allegorical theory, Benjamin develops his own conception, closely linking allegory to mourning and nostalgia. The study also explores how Benjamin’s reflections on symbol and allegory bridge literary theory and fiction, focusing on Berlin Childhood around 1900, where autobiographical prose transforms childhood spaces into allegorical representations of memory, revealing allegory as both a mode of thought and a means of recovering the past.