Allusion

Allusion is a stylistic device, a hint at a widely known historical, mythological, biblical or literary fact, event or personage, which enriches the text with additional meanings through association. Allusion does not quote the source directly but only refers to it, counting on the cultural awareness of the reader, capable of recognising the hint and unfolding its implicit content. Thus the author briefly introduces a whole layer of meanings into a work: by calling a hero "Don Quixote," the writer evokes the entire complex of notions of noble quixotism. Allusion is closely linked to reminiscence and intertextuality. It is an important means of a work's dialogue with cultural tradition and one of the key devices of poetics, especially in the literature of Modernism and Postmodernism.