Thanks for all the suggestions. I had thought about Carruthers, but
some insightful postgrad has his/her hands on it presently, and so I will have
a library person snatch it away.
I don't know if this is a facile observation, but the way Grosseteste
employs the image, it is not about constructing the past, but rather
the present. The sermon (which I am tempted to think was his
inaugural lecture when he became master of theology at Oxford) starts
off with an Ezechiel pericope about scripture being written externally
and internally (foris et intus). RG exploits this image by arguing
that this is a reading strategy a la four senses of Scripture (you
can guess which is external and which is internal). When it comes to
discussing the allegorical and moral sense, he argues that this
reading must be reflexive, whereupon he then speaks of the human mind
as a book written foris et intus. The point he is making is that the
spiritual reading produces a change (reader-response???) in the
reader, which is then reintroduced into the reading process. The
reader does not focus on the past, but rather on the present activity of
reading and the changes it produces in the reader.
I realise that one cannot extricate memory from the act of reading,
but I think he talking about something different than what interests
Clanchy or Geary.
Does this make sense? I am new to literary theory, and I have
found Eco's essays in the Limits of Interpretation very useful as
well as Anthony Thiselton's heavy going survey, New Horizons in
Hermenuetics. Any further bits of wisdom would be most welcome.
Thanks again.
Jim
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James R. Ginther
Dept. of Theology and Religious Studies
University of Leeds
Leeds LS2 9JT
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E-mail: Phone: +44.113.233.6749
[log in to unmask] Fax: +44.113.233.3654
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http://www.leeds.ac.uk/trs/trs.html
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"Excellencior enim est scriptura in mente viva quam in
pelle mortua" -Robert Grosseteste.
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