Allegory

figurative expression, usually a narrative with one or more personifications, and often with some moralizing conclusion. More recently, it has been used in postmodernism to describe the relation of one text to another, particularly where they purport to be about the same thing but actually introduce unbidden levels of signification alien to each other. See, for example, Gregory Ulmer's "The Object of Post-Criticism" in Hal Foster, ed., The Anti-Aesthetic.