At 09:47 08/02/99 -0500, you wrote:
>I'm not a literary postmodernist, but I, too, hold suspect Robertson's
>method of applying the four-fold sense of scripture to secular literary
>texts.
Long before postmodernism was even thought of, D.W. Robertson was held up as
an example of how NOT to read medieval texts. I was warned off him as an
undergraduate (and I graduated in 1969!). It happened that I did my
postgraduate study under Talbot Donaldson, leader of the opposing school of
literary criticism; and I would draw members' attention to his article
"Patristic Exegesis in the Criticism of Medieval Literature: the
Opposition" in "Speaking of Chaucer" (London 1970) which I think deals a
mortal blow to the Robertsonian approach.
Of particular interest to members may be Donaldson's citation of W.K.
Wimsatt's quotation from Thomas Aquinas, that "in no intellectual activity
of the human mind can there properly speaking be found anything but the
literal sense: only in Scripture, of which the Holy Ghost was the author,
man the instrument, can there be found [the spiritual sense - that is, the
four levels of allegory]".
(Speaking of Chaucer, p. 137.)
But why should I, a "lewed man" speak on this subject when we have the
Ceramic Doctor on the list?
Oriens.
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