fable, parable, and allegory

fable, parable, and allegory, any form of imaginative literature or spoken utterance constructed in such a way that readers or listeners are encouraged to look for meanings hidden beneath the literal surface of the fiction. A story is told or perhaps enacted whose details—when interpreted—are found to correspond to the details of some other system of relations (its hidden, allegorical sense). The poet, for example, may describe the ascent of a hill in such a...