Some Medieval Systems of Polysemy (Allegory):
From Biblical Hermeneutics to Secular Criticism

     
Talmudic (Legal) Tradition & Jewish tradition in general


Jesus's Parables --

     See Matthew 13:10-17 for the justification of speaking in 
     parables.


St. Paul (ca. 50 A.D.) -- 

     ". . . our sufficiency is of God; Who also hath made us 
     able ministers of the new testament; not of the letter, but 
     of the spirit; for the letter killeth, but the spirit 
     giveth life."  (II Cor 3:5-6)

     Also:  Jewish ritual law need not be literally observed, 
     for its true meaning is symbolic (ref?)



Now for the Comprehensive Interpretive Systems . . .


St. Augustine (ca. 427 A.D.) -- 

     1.  History
         (events as simply related)
                                    
     2.  Etiology
         (assignment of causes)

     3.  Analogy
         (demonstration of the non-contradiction between 
         passages of scripture)

     4.  Allegory
         (spiritual sense)


Hugh of St. Victor (ca. 1146) --

     1.  Historical Level

     2.  Allegorical Level (including the anagogical)

     3.  Tropological Level (i.e., moral level)

St. Thomas Aquinas (ca. 1272 A.D.) --

     1.  Literal Level

     2.  Allegorical Level

     3.  Tropological or Moral Level

     4.  Anagogical Level


Dante Alighieri (ca. 1308 A.D.) --

     1.  Literal Level
         (not going beyond the strict limits of the letter)

     2.  Allegorical Level 
         (the particular truth hidden under a beautiful fiction) 

     3.  Moral Level 
         (containing general moral truths)

     4.  Anagogic Level
         (the spiritual meaning, passing beyond the things of 
         earthly life)



REFLECTIONS:  

How much in these systems (including Augustine's own) really 
goes beyond Augustine's 2-part distinction between KERNEL & 
HUSK? 

Cf. Augustine's KERNEL / HUSK distinction and Horace's 
injunction to please and instruct.  Do they lead in the same or 
in different directions?

Cf. Augustine and Aristotelian formalism -- Augustine seems much 
less interested in studying form; he wants to shuck the HUSK and 
grasp the KERNEL.


AND YET:  

Augustine may be the first person to formulate a coherence 
theory of meaning, rather than a correspondence theory.  MEANING 
DEPENDS ON CONTEXT, NOT DENOTATION.


HISTORICAL IRONIES:

Aristotle wanted to explain the nature of art; his successors 
mined him for pragmatic rules, imitated his formal analysis, and 
discarded the philosophy behind it. 

Augustine & Aquinas develop systems for reading Scripture that 
depend on God's miraculous intervention for the safe 
preservation of meaning in figures; their successors, however, 
take the allegorical reading techniques and apply them to 
profane literature as well.  God turns out not to be necessary.