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.