At 09:55 09.02.99 -0500, you wrote:
>In Dante's Letter to Can Grande he says that his Commedia is "polysemous,
>that is, endowed with many meanings."  The first, he says, is literal, the
>second is mystical or allegorical, which is further divided into the
>allegorical, the moral, and the anagogical. 

Dear Charles J. Merrill,

The Letter (Ep 13) and the passage in question (Ep 13,20ss.) present
several problems, 1) problems of attribution -- which have been strongly
exagerated by some critics but are still hanging in the air --, 2) problems
of textual criticism -- habitually ignored by Dante scholars until very
recently --, and 3) problems of understanding which seem in fact serious to
me and are usually underrated by Dante scholars. 

1) Ep 13 consists of a epistolary part (Ep 13,1-13 = paragraphs I-IV)
dedicating the Paradiso to Cangrande della Scala and followed by a long
expository part (Ep 13,14-87 = paragraphs V-XXXI) giving first an
introduction to the Commedia based on the principle of the 'accessus ad
auctorem' and adding then a line by line gloss on the beginning of the
Paradiso. This expository part, where the author takes on the role of a
lector (as announced already in Ep 13,13) and switches to speaking of Dante
in the third person, ends somewhat abruptly and is followed by an
epistolary ending of the letter (Ep 13,88-90 = paragraphs XXXII-XXXIII). 
   The Letter is extant in nine manuscripts of the 15th thru 17th
centuries, the three oldest of which (group alpha) contain only the
epistolary beginning but indicate that this epistolary beginning was
originally followed by an 'introductio oblati operis', whereas the
remaining manuscripts (group beta) contain the full text with epistolary
beginning, expository part and epistolary ending. The expository part (and
perhaps also the epistolary ending) has very close paralles in early Dante
commentaries which indicate that this expository part or a a very similar
text was used as a source by some of D's early commentators, but in the
time before Filippo Villani (ca. 1400) they never quote it as a text of
Dante and so it is doubtful if they knew this text as a text by Dante and
in the complete form as attested in the younger manuscript group 'beta'.
  The authenticity of the Letter has been debated since the last century,
and today most scholars take the view that the epistolary beginning of the
letter is authentic, whereas opinions regarding the expository part and
ending are divided: some defend the authenticity of the entire letter,
wheras others believe that the expository part (and, by consequence, also
the epistolary ending or at least a part of it) is a later addition made by
an Anonymous who based his additions on early Dante commentaries or on a
common source (i.e. on an "Ur-Accessus" used by him and by Dante's early
commentators). 
  Personally, I have no difficulties to accept the epistolary beginning as
authentic and thus to accept also that this part of the letter was
originally followed by an 'introductio oblati operis' written by Dante. But
I am not fully convinced that the manuscripts of group beta preserve this
original 'introductio oblatio operis' very faithfully and without any
essential changes or interpolations. The separate transmission of the
epistolary beginning in group alpha is no serious problem, because this
epistolary beginning is written in highly elaborate epistolary style,
whereas the expository part is written in far more simple scholastic prose,
and thus it should not surprise us that in humanistic times somebody
decided to copy only the epistolary beginning and to preserve it as a
sample of epistolary style whereas the rest of the original letter was
dismissed as being without stylistic interest. I am a bit more irritated,
though not seriously, by the fact that Filippo Villani was the first to
quote the epistolary beginning and to attribute the whole letter to Dante.
But what bothers me is the question how the expository part and the
epistolary ending relate to their textual parallels in earlier Dante
commentaries, and I don't think that Dante scholars (namely Mazzoni,
Jenaro-MacLennan and Kelly) have investigated this problem sufficiently to
decide whether the epistolary part as preserved in manuscript group beta
predates or rather postdates (maybe only in interpolated parts) these early
Dante commentaries.

2) The passage dealing with the multiple senses of the Commedia is part of
the expository part and thus preserved only by group beta. It is not part
of the 'accessus' proper, i.e. of the expository portion discussing the
conventional six points "subiectum" (matter of the work), "forma" (formal
division of the work and generic modes of treatment), "titulus" (the title
'Comoedia'), "agens" (author), and "finis" (leading purpose of the work).
But it serves as a sort of preliminary to the discussion of the "subiectum"
and should not be isolated from this context. I give the text of both
paragraphs according to Cecchini's critical edition, capitalizing one of
his conjectures:

   [Paragraph VII:] Ad evidentiam itaque dicendorum sciendum est 
quod istius operis non est simplex sensus, ymo dici potest polisemos, 
hoc est plurium sensuum; nam primus sensus est qui habetur per 
litteram, alius est qui habetur per significata per litteram. 
Et primus dicitur litteralis, secundus vero allegoricus sive 
moralis <SIVE ANAGOGICUS> (20). Qui modus tractandi, ut melius 
pateat, potest considerari in istis versibus: "In exitu Israel 
de Egypto, domus Iacob de populo barbaro, facta est Iudea 
sanctificatio eius, Israel potestas eius" [Ps 113,1s.]. Nam si 
ad litteram solam inspiciamus, significatur nobis exitus filiorum 
Israel de Egipto, tempore Moysis; si ad allegoriam, nobis 
significatur nostra redemptio facta per Christum; si ad moralem 
sensum, significatur nobis conversio anime de luctu et miseria 
peccati ad statum gratie; si ad anagogicum, significatur exitus 
anime sancte ab huius corruptionis servitute ad eternam glorie 
libertatem (21). Et quomodo isti sensus mistici variis appellentur 
nominibus, generaliter omnes dici possunt allegorici, cum sint a 
litterali sive historiali diversi. Nam allegoria dicitur ab _alleon_
grece, quod in latinum dicitur _alienum_, sive _diversum_ (22). 
   [Paragraph VIII:] Hiis visis, manifestum est quod duplex oportet 
esse subiectum circa quod currant alterni sensus. Et ideo videndum 
est de subiecto huius operis prout ad litteram accipitur; deinde de 
subiecto prout allegorice sententiatur (23). Est ergo subiectum 
totius operis, litteraliter tantum accepti, status animarum post 
mortem simpliciter sumptus; nam de illo et circa illum totius 
operis versatur processus. Si vero accipiatur opus allegorice, 
subiectum est homo prout merendo et demerendo per arbitrii 
libertatem iustitie premiandi et puniendi obnoxius est (24).

All the manuscripts (group beta) preserve for VII.20 only the reading
"...secundus vero allegoricus sive moralis. Qui modus tractandi...".
Giuliani (1882) was not satisfied by this reading and changed "allegoricus
sive moralis" into "allegoricus sive mysticus", pointing this emendation
out in his annotations. He was followed, without such an indication, by
Toynbee whose English translation seems to be the text on which you based
your quotation above. Pistelli (1920), satisfied neither by the manuscript
reading nor by Giuliani's emendation, proposed the conjecture "allegoricus
sive moralis SIVE ANAGOGICUS" and adopted this as the text for his critical
edition of Dante's letters in the centenary edition of 1921, unfortunately
without pointing out the purely conjectural nature of this reading. It took
more than half a century until Ricklin (1993) brought this conjectural
nature back to attention and argued for preserving the manuscript reading
without any emendation or conjectural addition, whereas Cecchini (1995)
returned to Pistelli's conjecture but now marked it as such. The first
Dante commentary which offers an unquestionable textual parallel to VII.20
is Boccaccio's (a parallel where Boccaccio is also clearly dependent on a
text like VII.20 and clearly not himself the source for VII.20), and he too
used a text with the reading of group beta "allegoricus sive moralis", i.e.
without the additional "sive anagogicus". There is only one earlier
commentator offering a parallel which can be seen as *possibly* related to
VII.20, Guido da Pisa (writing ca. 1328), who writes: "Primusque
intellectus sive sensus quem continet Comedia dicitur hystoricus, secundus
allegoricus, tertius tropologicus, quartus vero et ultimus dicitur
anagogicus" (ed. Cioffari, p.6). If Guido in fact used a source like
VII.20, this source may have offered the reading "secundus vero allegoricus
sive moralis sive anagogicus" as conjectured by Pistelli, but it is also
possible that Guido simply supplemented the reference to the anagogical
sense by himself, and it is also by no means sure that he really used any
source like VII.20. The textual problem of VII.20 is a minor one, but it is
of some importance for deciding which and how many allegorical senses Ep 13
attributes to the Commedia.

3) The relation between paragraphs VII and VIII is by no means clear. If we
read VII out of its context (as far too many Dante scholars do), we can
understand that a) the Commedia has a literal sense conveyed by the words
and a second sense conveyed by the "significata per litteram"; b) the
second sense is twofold (if we understand the manuscript reading
"allegoricus sive moralis" as not simply adducing various names for the
same and unique non-literal sense) or threefold (according to Pistelli's
conjecture), under the condition that the phrasing "Et primus dicitur...
secundus vero..." is not just a general statement about literal and
non-literal sense in general, but refers more specifically to the Commedia;
d) this polysemous character can be illustrated by the four scriptural
senses of Psalm 113,1; e) we are entitled to use the term 'allegoricus'
indiscriminately for every non-literal sense, a piece of information which
is not unwelcome but seems not really indispensable here. And from all
this, still reading paragraph VII out of its context, we might conclude
that the Letter in fact attributes the scriptural principle to the
Commedia, although we may still be a bit uncertain if we are really
expected to find all four scriptural senses (Pistelli's conjecture) or only
the first three of them (as the manuscript reading might suggest) in the
Commedia.
   Yet if we read VII as a preliminary to paragraph VIII, we have to ask
which of the things explained in VII are really necessary for understanding
VIII ("ad evidentiam dicendorum sciendum est...", "Hiis visis, manifestum
est..."). And then things become pretty muddy. Paragraph VIII is a real
anticlimax to the expectations which we may have been building up while
reading VII. It does not apply the fourfold or a threefold principle to the
subject matter of the Commedia, it does not speak of a "subiectum
quadruplex" or "subiectum triplex" of this work, but it distinguishes only
a "subiectum duplex". Moreover, explaining how this subiectum duplex is to
be understood, it does not recur to the semantic understanding previously
expounded for Psalm 113,1, that is, it does not credit the Commedia with a
typological sense similar to the relation between Moses and Christ, it does
not credit it with a moral sense relating to the conversion of the human
soul in this life, and it does not credit it with an anagogic sense
relating to the soul's ascent to eternal life. Apparently, it has no use
for this scriptural example, but determines the allegorical subject of the
Commedia in a new and different way. If we had to find a name for it, we
might term this allegorical subject as predominantly 'moral', but it still
differs from the moral understanding as previously expounded for Psalm 113,1.
   So if we read both paragraphs in context, it seems very doubtful that Ep
13 attributes the four or at least three scriptural senses to the Commedia.
Rather it seems that we are supposed to understand the following points: a)
the Commedia has not only a literal sense conveyed by the words, but also a
second sense conveyed by the "significata per litteram"; b) a second sense
of this type can be named 'allegorical' or 'moral' (or even 'anagogical');
c) to understand how one and the same text can have multiple senses, we
have a look at the four senses of Psalm 113,1; d) to understand how the
word 'allegoricus' will be used in the next paragraph, we are informed that
every non-literal sense, regardless of its specific contents and of its
possibly more specific contents, can be called 'allegorical'. And now that
we have understood all this, we are able to understand also paragraph VIII,
i.e. that the Commedia has two different subjects, one literal and one
allegorical in the wider sense of 'different from the literal sense' (but
not allegorical in the more narrow sense of OT prefiguration of the history
of Christ and his Church).
  I am not fully convinced that this is the correct understanding of both
paragraphs, because it does not really explain why VII elaborates at such
lenght on the scriptural senses and on the meaning of 'allegoricus'. On the
other hand, I am also not fully convinced that the text of VII and/or it's
position as a preliminary to VIII are really authentic. It srikes me as odd
that those early Dante commentaries which offer close parallels to VIII
never make this connection, even in those cases where, in other contexts,
they have something to say about multiple senses of the Commedia and even
say it in a form which (certainly in Boccaccio and less certainly in Guido
da Pisa) might go back to a source like VII. I have not investigated this
problem sufficiently in order to reach any firm or tentatively firm
conclusion (because such an investigation cannot be based on printed
editions of the Dante's early commentators, but has to recur to their
manuscripts), and so all I can say is that I have some doubts that the
Epistle to Cangrande really attributes three or four (scriptural) senses to
the Commedia.

Yet there is one point were my opinions are very firm: even if we assume
that the letter is authentic and that it attributes all four scriptural
senses to the Commedia, we should not expect it to give us already an
essential clue how to disclose these senses in the Commedia. The author of
this letter is speaking /writing "sub lectoris officio" to a 'friend' who
is not known to have had many other interests in his life than politics and
warefare (I leave aside women and a somptuous style of life). A reader whom
Dante addresses in Latin (which may tell us more about the requirements of
politeness than about Cangrande's linguistic abilities) but who
nevertheless matches very well the description which Dante in his Convivio
had given of those readers who, because of their involvement in the vita
activa, lack the intellectual background for grasping the 'true'
allegorical meaning of his poetry and are therefore in bad need of a
competent "lettore" to disclose this true meaning to them. A reader who was
even in need to be informed what the four senses of scriptures are would
definitely not have been expected by Dante to be competent to apply this
exegetical principle to the Commedia or to any other writing.

With apologies for the uncivil lenght of this rather tangential posting,

  Otfried

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