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{"id":17220,"date":"2015-04-30T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2015-04-30T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/leithart.level2d.com\/?p=2037"},"modified":"2015-04-30T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2015-04-30T00:00:00","slug":"allegorizing-homer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/2015\/04\/allegorizing-homer\/","title":{"rendered":"Allegorizing Homer"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n<\/head>

Allegorizing becomes the<\/em> mode of interpretation during the medieval period: \u201cIt finds expression not only in the \u2018moralizing\u2019 of Ovid and other authors through allegorical interpretation, but also in the fact that personified beings of a supersensual nature . . . . could become the principal personages of poetic creations: from Purdentius\u2019s Pychomachia <\/em>to the twelfth-century philosophical epic; from the Romance of the Rose to Chaucer and Spencer and Calderon\u2019s auto sacramentales<\/em>. The allegorical concept of Homer was still self-evident to Erasmus.\u201d Among pagans, allegorizing of Homer was part of a defense of Homer against philosophical attack: \u201cIt was then taken over by the philosophical schools, and also by history and natural science. It was in harmony with one of the basic characteristics of Greek religious thought: the belief that the gods express themselves in cryptic form \u2013 in oracles, in mysteries. It was the duty of the discerning man to see through these veils and coverings, which hid the secret from the eyes of the crowd \u2013 an idea which still influences Augustine\u201d (205).<\/p>\n

This continues, Curtius says, until \u201cScholasticism put an end to the confusion of philosophy with poetry, rhetoric, proverbial lore, and the various learnings of the schools. The old connection between the artes <\/em>and philosophy is severed at a blow\u201d (213). This last is at best an overstatement. Thomas is still quite at home with allegorical methods of interpretation, as is evident as much in the Summa <\/em>as in his commentaries.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"