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. (I have, however, the utmost respect for the powers of his mind
and the breadth and rigor of his scholarship - I revisit his <Preface to
Chaucer> often when I'm teaching Chaucer courses.)
My concerns are two. First, if you look at how medieval commentators
interpreted Virgil and Ovid, even allegorically, you generally see only
two senses - historical and allegorical (I think here of Bernardus
Silvestris on Virgil, and John of Garland, among others, on Ovid). Even
Dante, who proclaimed that his <Convivio> was to be read according to the
four-fold method, demonstrates only two levels. So I think that when
secular texts were allegorized, they were considered only on two levels.
Second, I think audience needs to be considered. I doubt that the courtly
auditors of, say, Chretien de Troyes' romances or Chaucer's fabliaux were
practiced in the four-fold levels of reading. They might have been
cognizant of them, but I doubt they'd have applied to them; the method is
largely clerical. I imagine that some works, like the Prose Quest for the
Holy Grail, as it seems to arise from monastic or clerical circles, may
have been subjected to multiple levels of interpretation. And copies of
works that ended up in monastery libraries might have found four-fold
readings by individuals who checked them out. But I think if we seek an
"anagogic" reading (to add to three other readings) of <Ivain> or <The
Reeve's Tale>, we might be doing something that the original and intended
audiences wouldn't have thought to do.
Not that allegorical readings can't be coaxed out of these works, or that
original audiences didn't see spiritual truths represented in them. But
we're just to two levels then aren't we? I just doubt that a
rigorous, 4-level exegesis was ever employed by these works' original
audiences.
But, as always, I stand under correction.
Pax,
John Marlin
The College of St. Elizabeth
Morristown, NJ USA
On Mon, 8 Feb 1999, Sarah Salih wrote:
> Dear all,
>
> A literary postmodernist type intervenes to point to D. Aers, "A Whisper in the Ear
> of Early Modernists" in the collection, Culture and History, as just one of many arguments as
> to the problems of using DW Robertson's interpretative methods with non-Biblical medieval
> literature. Aers also attacks new historicists, so there's somthing in there to keep everyone
> happy. Sorry if this seems too digressive; but it is about the relation of "medieval religion" to
> "medieval culture" and whether they are in fact the same thing.
>
> Sarah Salih
>
>
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