Making references

Wouldn't it be better to create those bridges inside a closed work so everybody who reads it, gets it? You can't expect everyone to know every reference, so you'd limit yourself.

That'd require a sufficiently long work, and more often than not a series. That's how HP got such a crazy fandom. Also limiting your audience and pandering to them tends to be more effective, unless you overdid it and end up with a too small number. People will enjoy getting an obscure reference much more than some simple shit that became symbolic.

Though of course one can always roll both ways.

pic related.
there was a thread earlier this week on lit that mentioned that Rupi leaves no room for error in interpreting one of her "poems".

Because echoing something that someone surrounded by aura of intelligence and who is dead for a couple of dozens of years said add depth and value to it.

Pretentious fags think it's smart when it's just cave man logic based on instinct to obey commands of elders.

>dogma in literature
you're going to be a shitty writer

>references is caveman logic
so I guess we have to make a fantasy world to explain our ideas?

you sound like a complete faggot

in case you would be writing research papers, instruction manuals, treatises and essays it might be good to just go directly to your point

if you are writing something for art and/or entertainment then well it is good that (or if) you have a point but just clinically stating it could lessen the artistic and entertaining purposes.
You can generate more enjoyment, more emotions, more stuff like that, using allegories references, word games and whatnot.
Some of these things also open up possibilities to depict multiple ideas together, to give many more levels for the reader to explore in your work, to give possibilities for the reader to generate his own imagery or come to his own conclusions.
some of these things are mentioned in post by

I see what you did there. However you're writing like a poetic faggot, which I suspect explains OP's hang ups on allegorical langauge

Because words don't have meanings, they're collections of uses. When I say "red", I'm not referencing the eternal form of red which is prior to all particular reds. I'm talking about all the red I've ever seen and hoping it lines up with all the red you've ever seen.

All words are allusions. No word is identical with it's token, so all words are symbols as well. Language IS allusions and symbols. If writing is making the best use of language for art's sake, you'd naturally be making use of and playing with the natural properties of language: including symbols and allusions.

References are great because everything you ever describe is a reference. Maybe it's a reference to something you've seen and your reader hasn't and maybe it's something you both know about. You can make yourself closer to the reader by showing that you both have a shared experience or knowledge. That makes them more sympathetic to you and thereby it's easier to emotionally affect them. Which I hope you're ready to admit IS one possible reason for writing.

TL;DR: People use them because they make the writing better, you fucking fucktard.

Allegory as a literary device is plebshit for redditors, read Croce on that.

you had me until i saw the pic. i guess i had a surprise lol

>Why not just say it how you mean it?

Ricoeur: All language is metaphor. Metaphors are not a special class of language. Language functions by subsuming particular instances under extant universals, and thus by expanding those universals and intermingling their meanings to encompass wider ranges of particulars.

Blumenberg: Some metaphors are also irreducible to simpler speech, because they form a Gestalt, which is holistic, not merely a combination of subordinate "simple" meanings.

Wittgenstein: All language is simply rule-following, and therefore every use of language is both novel and interpretive, an original attempt at following the rule. The rules only exist intersubjectively, and their only check is whether someone understands them or not, so every use of language is also a request to the listener to understand what you "mean" by your at interpretation, and confirm you followed "the" rule.

Derrida: There is no transcendental signifier.

Because not everything can be said with reference. And not everything that can be explained can be given enough description, enough words. That abstraction exists not only within language, but within our individual understandings of the world and we within it is a testament to height of symbols. Without animals to chase down, no bonehouse can be constructed, no scared place found in which we can weather storms.

It's more aesthetic. Plain, simple and direct writing are for the simple minded.

>You can't expect everyone to know every reference,

The literature of Heian Japan literally expected this and is still the highest form of aesthetic literature I have ever read because of it. Genji is a masterpiece of poetry and storytelling.

allegories and symbols are mandatory but references are cheesey as fuck. I hate reference heavy art and humor

something complete in itself (that didn't reference anything outside itself) would be utterly meaningless

Words are supposed to be concrete unless you're incapable of precisely and exactly the communicating what you mean because you're retarded

>Words are supposed to be
lol

read Art as Technique by Viktor Shklovsky

Not everything is written for everyone though. Ofc if you read a recent work of Indian literature, you wouldn't completely understand all of its depth. If everything was written in a vacuum, without works interacting with and developing prior thoughts, it would all be stale due to the fact that everything would be limited to the understanding and skill of each individual author.

t. butthurt pleb who can only parrot old works without understanding and conversing with them