1. Exemplum
A moral anecdote, brief or extended, real or fictitious, used to illustrate a point.
Exemplary literature sprang as a genre in classical, medieval, and Renaissance literature, and consisted of lives of famous figures. It used this figures (by emphasizing good or bad character traits) to make a moral point.

2. Allegory
As a literary device, is an extended metaphor where persons, abstract ideas, or events represent not only themselves on the literal level, but they also stand for something else on the symbolic level
Generally treated as a figure of rhetoric, but does not have to be expressed solely in language (ex: painting)
Medieval thinking accepted allegory as having a reality underlying rhetorical or fictional uses

3. Modern Artistic Example
The Cycle of Terror and Tragedy
by Graydon Parrish

4. Fable
A succinct fictional story, in prose or verse, that features animals, mythical creatures, plants, inanimate objects or forces of nature which are anthropomorphized (given human qualities)
Illustrates a moral lesson, which may at the end be expressed explicitly in a short adage (saying).

5. Distinctions & Connections
In a fable, the lesson learned is not necessarily allegorical. (Each animal is not necessarily a symbol for something else)
The reader learns the lesson as an exemplum--an example of what one should or should not do.

6. Parody
The Greek word parodia can be translated as counter-song, an imitation set against the original.
In current use, is an imitative work created to mock, comment on, or trivialize an original work, its subject, author, style, or some other target
Can occur when whole elements of one work are lifted out of their context and reused, not necessarily to be ridiculed.

7. Allusion people, places, events, literary work, myths, works of art,
An allusion is a figure of speech that makes a reference to, or representation of:
people, places, events, literary work, myths, works of art,
either directly or by implication