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Josef A salutory admonition! Caveat Lector indeed! I expect that Dante utlised the 'colour code' most applicable to his purpose. Dream books seem like the sort of material our Florentine poet-turned-philosopher would have rated as sources! Thanks for the bibliographical information! Graham. On Wed, 2 Feb 2000 02:04:54 -0500 [log in to unmask] wrote: > >Graham WM. worte: > >What about a formalised 'mystic language of colours'? Would > >Dante, connected by some with Alrchemy and Christian (and > >not so Christian) mysticism have had access to a textbook > >of colour symbolism, with meanings fixed by convention? > > > > Graham: > Caveat lector: Just speculating! As to the possible sources > of "codification" for colours or colour symbolism,many of the > Onomastica Sacra attached to Medieval Bibles fill by a kind of > reverse analogical "etymology" certain colours with rather specific > associations. These could feed into a commonly accepted convention or > related set of conventions. > Likewise, the Late Antique and Medieval "dream-books" ( > Oneirocritica), Greek, Arabic and Latin( particularly popular in > Italy), often contain quite specific colour decodings. These too > could feed into fixing of meanings. > > > Josef Gulka > > Josef Gulka > [log in to unmask] > Tel: 215- 732-8420 > Fax (215) 732-8420 ---------------------- Graham Williamson-Mallaghan School of Classics and Theology Queens Building Queens Drive University of Exeter EX4 4QG 01392-676239 [log in to unmask] [log in to unmask] [log in to unmask] Subscribe to my internet/e-mail discussion forum. Exchange ideas and make international academic contacts: http://www.mailbase.ac.uk/lists/later-roman-empire/ %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%