The views of Quintilian, Benjamin and Blumenberg on allegory and metaphor, together with a critical appraisal of Vico's and Frye's theories on myth provide the theoretical framework for the investigations undertaken in this thesis. An analysis of the depiction of city life in Rilke's early works helps establish the function of the city-allegory in the Tenth Duino Elegy. This function is further developed, in detail, in the central third chapter of the thesis, which offers a text-immanent examination of the early stages of the elegy. The mythology manifested in the second half of the poem serves to illustrate the crucial significance of the contrast between city and landscape in Rilke's poetology. Finally, the paradigm of Meister Eckhart's "unio mystica" is used in an attempt to present a new interpretation of the final eight lines of the elegy.