Chapter II
Theoretical Foundation
UNDERSTANDING OF ALLUSION IN “AN OCCURRENCE AT OWL CREEK BRIDGE”
A. Definition of Allusion
An allusion is a literary device that stimulates ideas, associations, and extra information in the reader's mind with only a word or two. Elizabethan Thomas Nashe's in “Litany in Time of Plague” said that allusion is a passing reference, without explicit identification, to a literary or historical person, place, or event, or to another literary work or passage.
On the other hand, M.H. Abrams defined allusion as "a brief reference, explicit or indirect, to a person, place or event, or to another literary work or passage". It is left to the reader or hearer to make the connection (Fowler) an overt allusion is a misnomer for what is simply a reference. Allusion has 3 components. There are Historical allusion, Mythical Allusion, Biblical Allusion. Historical allusion based on histories that cover the prose. Mythical allusion based on myth that covers the prose. Biblical allusion based on bible that covers that story. Since allusions are not explicitly identified, they imply a fund of knowledge that is shared by an author and the audience for whom the author writes. Most literary allusions are intended to be recognized by the generally educated readers of the author's time, but some are aimed at a special coterie.
From those definitions of allusion, the writer tends to have same opinion with M. H. Abrams’s theory. Allusion needs to explicit identification to know allusion in the story. We have to know what did happen in the place which the story made. And it needs to explicit information like Abrams’s said.
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