Editing Allusion (section)

==Academic analysis of the concept of allusions==
In discussing the richly allusive poetry of [[Virgil]]'s ''[[Georgics]]'', R. F. Thomas<ref>R. F. Thomas, "Virgil's ''Georgics'' and the art of reference" ''Harvard Studies in Classical Philology '' '''90''' (1986) pp 171–98.</ref> distinguished six categories of allusive reference, which are applicable to a wider cultural sphere. These types are:
# ''' Casual reference''', "the use of language which recalls a specific antecedent, but only in a general sense" that is relatively unimportant to the new context;
# ''' Single reference''', in which the hearer or reader is intended to "recall the context of the model and apply that context to the new situation"; such a specific single reference in Virgil, according to Thomas, is a means of "making connections or conveying ideas on a level of intense subtlety";
# ''' Self-reference''', where the ''locus'' is in the poet's own work;
# ''' Corrective allusion''', where the imitation is clearly in opposition to the original source's intentions;
# ''' Apparent reference''' "which seems clearly to recall a specific model but which on closer inspection frustrates that intention"; and
# ''' Multiple reference''' or '''conflation''', which refers in various ways simultaneously to several sources, fusing and transforming the cultural traditions.

A type of literature has grown round explorations of the allusions in such works as [[Alexander Pope]]'s ''[[The Rape of the Lock]]'' or [[T. S. Eliot]]'s ''[[The Waste Land]]''.