morality tales
Stories teaching virtue
Morality tales are stories designed to teach ethical lessons, typically featuring characters who represent virtues or vices and plots where good behavior is rewarded and bad behavior punished.
The term often carries a slightly dismissive tone, suggesting heavy-handedness: The film was less a drama than a morality tale about greed.
Also called morality plays when staged.
- parablesDidactic allegorical tales
- lessonsUnits of teaching
- life lessonsPractical wisdom from experience
- fablesDidactic animal stories
- poetic justiceFitting outcome matching misdeeds
folklore · good vs evil · exemplum · hagiography · virtue · Everyman · redemption · sins of the father · consequences · just desserts · passion plays · cautionary tales · allegory · comeuppance · Victorian literature · fairy tales · warnings · sin
- fictionfiction, novel, novels, novella, novellas
- folklorefairy tales, fairytales, folktales, folk tales, folktale
- Literary traditionsmythology, folklore, fairy tales, fables, legends
- mythsmyth, legend, fable, creation myth, origin story
- fablesfable, Aesop, Aesop's fables, Aesop fables, tortoise and hare
- moral talesfable, parable, allegory, cautionary tales, apologue
morality talesescapist fiction
Entertainment through imaginary worlds
pulp fiction · guilty pleasures · exploitation films · trash TV · sensationalism
morality talesspectacle
Visually striking event
titillation · sensationalism · art for art's sake · aestheticism
tale, moral, immoral, morality, morals, morally, amoral, immorality, moralizing