Introduction: Interpretive Conflations — Exegesis and the Arts in the Middle Ages

Abstract

The six papers in this cluster arose from the international 41st Medieval Workshop at the University of British Columbia, held in November 2013 on the topic “Interpretive Conflations — Exegesis and the Arts in the Middle Ages.” The papers are concerned with diverse aspects of exegesis, including early forms of allegoresis in classical interpretations of Homer, the typological and other aspects touched on in the annotations in early medieval manuscripts of Josephus’s Jewish Antiquities (possibly suggesting Cassiodorian origins), quotation as exegesis in Felix’s Life of St. Guthlac, the multiple allegory of the text and images of Hrabanus Maurus’s In honorem sanctae crucis, Hugh of St. Victor’s view of history as the basis for all interpretation, and the vernacular exegesis presented in the Middle English Pearl.