Dear Otfried Lieberknecht:
Thanks for refining and qualifying my earlier post. I appreciate the time
that you, and others on this list, take to help me understand more clearly
and fully the implications of my thinking.
I'd add one more note to the problem of using methods of biblical exegesis
in understanding secular texts - there seems to be little evidence of such
a method in practice. We have plenty of glossed manuscripts of Chaucer,
but I don't recall seeing any glosses that systematically employ these
methods (were many of such extant, I imagine Robertson and his school
would have made much of them). I believe there are extant a number of
allegorical commentaries on Dante, but, as you said we have to take this
case-by-case and he's a different case.
My interest in this is stirred less by my regularly teaching Chaucer to
undergrads than by my continuing reading and work in medieval drama. I
have a sense, from some of the manuscript rubrics and other shards and
fragments I've seen, that medieval plays were written (as you said of
Alanus and Dante) with a wide audience in mind, so that the unlettered
peasant or craftsman, the somewhat lettered curate, and the highly
proficient magister all could take something from them. And because the
plays are largely on Biblical subjects, it seems that some readers would
adopt habits of Biblical exegesis in pondering them. What I'm pondering
regarding some 12th-century plays (and may extend to vernacular Biblical
plays of later centuries) is the possibility that exegetical method
influenced their composition and construction. That is, I'm wondering if
plays' dramaturgical frameworks and invented dialogue were so designed as
to invite particular allegorial readings from proficient audiences.
Regards,
John Marlin
The College of St. Elizabeth
Morristown, NJ USA
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