Jonathan Livingston Seagull | Literary Precedents
Stories of flight (with its symbolism of escape, freedom, control, intelligence, and sexual fulfillment) date from long before the Greek myth of Icarus and Daedalus.
Two other popular allegories (Pilgrim's Progress, 1684, and the tradition of Everyman, fifteenth century) illustrate how allegorical reading can seem natural when it fits the education of the readership. Adult fairy tales such as St. Exupery's The Little Prince (1943) and Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865) illustrate that the appeal of simple figures is not new....
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