Due to traditional views, metaphor and narrative are usually discussed in different contexts - as if they had nothing in common. However, during the last decades the theories of metaphor and narrative have undergone a number of changes, and what was formerly taken for granted in traditional literary criticism is no longer evident. In particular, whether metaphor and narrative are wholly unrelated or have some kind of common structure must be considered. In this essay, the possibilities and difficulties in comparing metaphor and narrative theories are illustrated with the example of Max Black's (1955) theory of metaphor and Mikhail Bakhtin's (1984) theory of the dialogical novel. (LLBA 2001, Vol. 35, n. 2)