ABSTRACT
Allegory and satire are in fact intimately connected. It is surprising how often one gains a better understanding of an allegory by considering it as a satire, and vice versa. The importance of thematic content to allegory goes without saying. If one combines the narrative form and thematic content of allegory with the detailed richness and stylized point of view found in good satire, one discovers literary forms of great potential. The morality belongs ultimately to the stock of the Psychomachia, and even in its earliest form it was necessarily something more than pure allegory. Realism of a kind helps to make the conflict of vice and virtue dramatically compelling, and in terms of the literary theories of the day such realism found appropriate expression in low style and a fairly wide range of comic incident.
