[j. d. worthington]

To clarify: No, Williams did not write what is often called "simple allegory" -- that is, a point-for-point allegory; rather, he wrote stories that were heavily allegorical on a multitude of layers, yet worked very well as story... much like the best of Hawthorne, Melville, Poe, etc. This (to me, at any rate) goes far beyond having allegorical elements and much more like your categorization of things that work as allegory, except that (from what I understand) Williams was quite consciously intending allegorical readings of his works as well. (I could be mistaken on this, as I've not read the pieces on Williams in about 3 decades, but I recall this striking me at the time.)

As for his sense of wonder, I'd agree with that; this is something that seems to have run strongly in that generation of fantaisistes. Oddly, I'd say that the sense of disillusionment and tragedy was at least as great with those who saw the horrors of the first World War as it is with today's generation of writers, but somehow they seem to have (by and large) avoided the despairing sense of cynicism so prevalent today....