Sensus Spiritualis: Studies in Medieval Significs and the Philology of Culture by Friedrich Ohly, Samuel P. Jaffe, Kenneth J. Northcott

Abstract

REVIEWS Sensus Spiritualis: Studies inMedieval Significs and the Philology of Culture. By FRIEDRICHOHLY. Ed. and with an Epilogue by SAMUELP. JAFFE. Trans. by KENNETH J. NORTHCOTT. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press. 2005. xviii+403 pP. ?35. ISBN 0-226-62089-I. The two major collections of Friedrich Ohly's publications, Schriften zur mittelal terlichen Bedeutungsforschung (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, I977) and Ausgewdhlte und neue Schriften zur Literaturgeschichte und zur Bedeutungsfor schung (Stuttgart: Hirzel, 1995), together contain thirty-seven essays, and the biblio graphy in the latter volume recorded many more. If one also takes into account that probably themajority of Ohly's writings far exceed the usual compass of an essay and often amount tomonographs in their own right, then any reader of this book unable to grapple with the often difficult and elevated, classical German of the originals need have no reservations about the representative quality of the seven items translated in this highly judicious selection, beginning with the absolutely seminal Kiel inaugural lecture 'On the Spiritual Sense of theWord in the Middle Ages'. Nor should that reader be deterred by the almost untranslatable concepts Bedeutungskunde, -forschung, and the related terminology. The term 'significs' used-inconsistently-in this vo lume unfortunately shares with more obvious possible translations the disadvantage of specific linguistic connotations unrelated to the medieval science encapsulated in theGerman which gives a harmonized focus to almost all of Ohly's work. But the only alternative, adopted by this reviewer in a translation of the seminal essay published in Forumfor Modern Language Studies, 41 (2005), I8-42, is paraphrase accompanied by reference to the German terms. The more controversial aspects of Ohly's work are well represented by the second chapter, 'Typology asHistorical Thought'. Published in I983 as the last of a series of essays which it to some extent summarizes, its opening pages present an unambiguous definition, 'Typological thought isChristocentric' (p. 37), but it proceeds, by way of the inclusion from the twelfth century onwards of types from classical antiquity, to what is strictly speaking a self-contradiction by drawing in examples assignable to Ohly's categories of 'halfbiblical' and 'extrabiblical' typology. Still more problematic is the typological dimension of post-biblical imitative historical events, not tomention the continued use of typology in the modern era, into which the second half of the essay provides fascinating insight with a particular focus on the New World and the English Pre-Raphaelites. Ohly rejects the concept of 'postfiguration' and, by implica tion, other similar terms invented by modern (especially American) literary critics to adapt historical typology to their own purposes. But his insistence on 'unsurpassabil ity' (Unziberbietbarkeit) as an essential component of true typology does not wholly address the point that in individual cases the boundary between heightening and in tensification (Steigerung) and imitation or exemplum may be unclear. More problem atic still, asOhly recognizes (pp. 53-54), is the question of the intention of individuals and institutions whose actions are subsequently mythologized in typological thought. Clarification of these and ofmany of the problems associated with medieval spiritual meanings is often less successful from the use of theory, which merely leads to a pro liferation of terminology unfounded in allegorical practice, than by the detailed study of individual examples. The third chapter, on Hugh of Folieto's twelfth-century dove miniature, is an admirable case in point, illustrating numerous areas of allegorical interpretation and demonstrating that iconography is an integral part of the disci pline. The spatial dimensions of allegorical thought emerge from the fourth chapter on Siena Cathedral. A particularly useful inclusion for both readers and non-readers of German is the MLR, 10 1 .4, 2006 Io69 sixth chapter, 'Poetry as the Necessary Fruit of a Suffering', hitherto published only in an Italian translation. This develops at greater length the ideas of the well-known lecture 'Tau und Perle' (here translated as the fifth chapter), which linked themyth of the origin of the pearl from the dewdrop to the acceptance or rejection of metaphors supposedly based on natural science in the understanding of poetry, now shifting the focus to the later emphasis on the sickness and suffering of the oyster in Jean Paul and a range...