Nowhere in Chaucer do we find what can be called a radically allegorical poem.

The two things that came out clearly were the sense of reality in the background and the mythical value: the essence of myth being that it should have no taint of allegory to the maker and yet should suggest incipient allegories to the reader.
[C.S. Lewis writes to J.R.R. Tolkien on December 7, 1929]

I thought I saw how stories of this kind could steal past a certain inhibition which had paralysed much of my own religion in childhood. Why did one find it so hard to feel as one was told one ought to feel about God or the sufferings of Christ? I thought the chief reason was that one was told one ought to. An obligation to feel can freeze feelings. And reverence itself did harm. The whole subject was associated with lowered voices; almost as if it were something medical. But supposing that by casting all these things into an imaginary world, stripping them of their stained-glass and Sunday School associations, one could make them for the first time appear in their real potency? Could one not thus steal past those watchful dragons? I thought one could.

I will eviscerate you in fiction. Every pimple, every character flaw. I was naked for a day; you will be naked for eternity.

I was the only boy in our school what had asthma," said the fat boy with a touch of pride. "And I've been wearing specs since I was three.

At this the duchess, laughing all the while, said: "Sancho Panza is right in all he has said, and will be right in all he shall say...