Allusion

An allusion is a figure of speech that makes a reference to, or representation of, a place, event, literary work, myth, or work of art, either directly or by implication. 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''.
In a freer informal definition, allusion is a passing or cusual reference, and incidental mention of something, either directly or by implication: In the stock market he met his Waterloo.

In discussing the richly allusive poetry of Virgil's Georgics, R.F. Thomas distinguished six categories of allusive reference, which are applicable to a wider cultural shere. These types are

1. 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;
2. 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";
3. Self-Reference, where the locus is in the poet's own work;
4. Corrective Allusion, where the imitation is clearly in opposition to the original source's intentions;
5. Apparent Reference ""which seems clearly to recall a specific model but which on closer inspection frustrates that intention" and
6. Multiple Reference or Conflation, which refers in various ways simultaneously to several sources, fusing and transforming the cultural traditions.

Backside of a clay tablet from Pylos bearing the motif of the Labyrinth, allusion to the mythological fight of Theseus and the Minotaur.










http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allusion