>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.)
Dear Bill,
This is one of the (in our times) most frequently misquoted passages in
Aquinas: those who adduce it as an argument for confining the reading of
non-biblical texts to the literal sense usually ignore the context and the
very specific thomistic understanding of the term 'literal sense'.
According to Thomas (preceded in this theory by Albertus Magnus), the
'literal sense' is every textual sense intended by the human author and
thus consists not only of the proper sense of the words, but also includes
the figural sense (sensus metaphoricus or parabolicus) if this figural
sense is intended by the human author (as opposed to the divine creator
arranging the course of salvation history in a way which makes the events
of this history signify other things). For Thomas, this applies to biblical
metaphors and parables no less than to non-biblical poetic fictions. It
does not exclude the possibility that biblical or non-biblical texts of
this kind can have multiple figural senses, but it attributes a different
name and status to them than to those multiple senses which were supposed
to be intended by God himself in the factual events of biblical salvation
history. Only the latter were labelled as 'spiritual', whereas the former
were labelled as 'literal'. According to Thomas, only the Bible (more
precisely: those biblical texts which account historical events with a
divinely predisposed meaning) can claim to have a 'spiritual' sense
intended by God himself, whereas in non-biblical texts (as well as in
biblical parables) even the figural sense is still only a 'literal sense'
in the sense of 'intended by the human author'.
Moreover, this was a very academic distinction professed by some (not all)
scholastic theologians but apparently without consequences for grammar and
rhetoric. Even Dante who was certainly familiar with the writings of Thomas
and Albertus chose to ignore their terminological innovation and preferred
the older understanding of 'literal sense' (proper sense of the words).
Best,
Otfried
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