allegorising

A case in point is George Cruikshank's huge emblematic painting The Worship of Bacchus (1860-62), a work allegorising the socially deleterious effects of alcohol, which the artist undertook when he himself took the pledge.

Rude Britannia: British Comic Art, at Tate Britain 2010

This allegorising tendency is engrained in Xenophon: it is his view of life; one of the best things he got from Socrates, no doubt.

Cyropaedia 2007

There were no scientific canons for the interpretation of written texts; allegorising commentators read their own wild fancies into the plainest sentences.

Medieval Europe 1901

Spenser has everywhere a certain romance-interest both of story and character which carries off in its steady current, where carrying off is needed, both his allegorising and his long descriptions.

A History of Elizabethan Literature George Saintsbury 1889

It is almost inconceivable to us how so disgusting a cultus could have been joined with innocence of life; but as Priapus long maintained his place as a rustic deity we must suppose that the hideous literalism of his surroundings must have been got over by ingenious allegorising, or forgotten by rustic veneration.

The History of Roman Literature From the earliest period to the death of Marcus Aurelius Charles Thomas Cruttwell 1879

Escaping, after his early _Temple de Cupido_, from the allegorising style, he learned to express his personal sentiments, and something of the gay, bourgeois spirit of France, with aristocratic distinction.

A History of French Literature Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. Edward Dowden 1878

In it science escapes not wholly from fantasy and myth, but at least from the allegorising spirit; his ethics and rhetoric are derived from Latin originals; his politics are his own.

A History of French Literature Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. Edward Dowden 1878

It is not spiritualising, allegorising, cramming meanings into an incident that are not in it, when we say -- Think of Jesus Christ as one of ourselves, knowing that

Expositions of Holy Scripture St. Luke Alexander Maclaren 1868

He suggests that the approval of their allegorising interpretations by St. Thomas Aquinas, merely arose out of St. Thomas's modesty, and his desire not to seem openly to controvert St. Augustin -- "voluisse Divus Thomas pro sua modestia subterfugere vim argumenti potius quam aperte Augustinum inconstantiæ arguere."

Darwiniana : Essays — Volume 02 Thomas Henry Huxley 1860

'The Garment of Good Ladies' is an ingenious and beautiful strain, written in that quaint style of allegorising which continued popular as far down as the days of Cowley, and even later.

Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Volume 1 George Gilfillan 1845