What is the principle?Ĭhapter seven had discussed the role of figural interpretation in medieval Christian drama. Breaking it down, I removed the appositive clause which modified the noun: “the principle… of the indestructibility of the whole historical and individual man turns against that order…” In removing it, I realized the importance of the dependant clause in understanding the sentence. At first, I was confused by the wording of this sentence. His style itself indicates the breaking transcendental principle in the first sentence of the block quote. After considering the diction, style, content, structure, and realism of the work, Auerbach begins to make a link between his writing and the coming epochs in history. This quote begins the conclusion to Auerbach’s examination of a selection from The Inferno of Dante Alighieri, commonly known as Dante’s Inferno. The tremendous pattern was broken by the overwhelming power of the images it had to contain” (202). Dante’s work made man’s Christian-figural being a reality, and destroyed it in the very process of realizing it. The image of man eclipses the image of God. “And by virtue of this immediate and admiring sympathy with man, the principle, rooted in divine order, of the indestructibility of the whole historical and individual man turns against that order, makes it subservient to its own purposes, and obscures it. The most significant turning point in transcendental purpose came almost unintentionally by Dante’s sympathy with man. From Early Christianity to the Middle Ages, the divine purpose of writing was maintained, though the aesthetic expression varied just as the model of Scripture’s styles did. The changing of literature’s transcendental purpose through Western history was particularly interesting to me. For this reading, I will be focusing on Auerbach’s remarks concerning what tranformations would eventually result from Dante’s allegory The Inferno of Dante Alighieri. Auerbach intermingles these two themes through his examination of texts in the context of separate individual epochs. Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in the Western Culture by Erich Auerbach interprets the transforming transcendental value and aesthetic expression of Western literature from antiquity to the modern era.
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