Someone on the list a while back mentioned W.R. Johnson's
"Darkness Visible: A Study of Virgil's Aeneid." I discovered the book at
about the same time it was mentioned. I was wondering if someone could
help with a few things in relation to the book.
First, Johnson's use of the old "fourfold method of
interpretation" is his "stratagem against monochromatic solutions to the
Aeneid" (p. 18). Being a minister who is very involved with the
exposition of scripture, I can appreciate Johnson's stance against
"monochromatic" readings. I personally think the idea of a text having
one meaning and one meaning only is historicist in the sense of Karl
Popper's understanding of historicism. Anyway, Johnson keeps talking
about myth in the same context. He thinks poetry and myth do not go
together. He uses the fourfold method as "a good defense
against...reductive mythmaking" (p. 19). I'm at a loss to understand his
view of myth. Maybe I'm just dense. So what does Johnson mean by
"reductive mythmaking" say in relation to the Aeneid? What would that
look like? And, why according to him is it dangerous?
Second, Johnson mentions the allegorical schools: the Stoicizing
Homerists, Philo, the church fathers, the school of Chartres and Dante
down to Spencer. Can someone flesh out the allegorical schools and/or
name some books that specifically take up the history of the allegorical
schools?
Though I am a Protestant who was taught that the old fourfold
method is anathema, I have recently made sermons using the method and
been astonished at how well the method applies the text. Therefore, the
third question is, do you think Johnson is right when he says the jingle
of Nicholas of Lyra "contains the wisdom of more than a thousand years of
some of the best work in literary criticism that the west has known"?
James C. Wiersum
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