What these two stories share with "The Virgin Suicides" is something that seems to have fallen out of Eugenides's later work — something the brilliant American writer Joy Williams calls "an anagogical level," a sort of spiritual ascent, or internal longing made manifest.
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Anagoge (ἀναγωγή), sometimes spelled anagogy, is a Greek word suggesting a "climb" or "ascent" upwards. The anagogical is a method of mystical or spiritual interpretation of statements or events, especially scriptural exegesis, that detects allusions to the afterlife.Encyclopædia Britannica Online, s. v. "anagogical interpretation", accessed October 11, 2012 Certain medieval theologians describe four methods of interpreting the scriptures: literal/historical, tropological, allegorical, and anagogical.
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The thema was then restated and followed by the process, a breakdown of multiple parts of the thema—the historical, allegorical (personified), tropological (moralized), and anagogical (the mystical). Finally, the sermon would close with a recitation (a quick review) and a benediction (blessing).
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As a concluding remark, Augustine encourages the interpreter and preacher of the Bible to seek a good manner of life and, most of all, to love God and neighbor. There is traditionally a fourfold sense of biblical hermeneutics: literal, moral, allegorical (spiritual), and anagogical.
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It also contained elements of prophecy, discussing how the crusade was part of the larger divine plan. Thus it was a medieval allegory work containing the four elements of allegory: literal, typological, moral, and anagogical. Like the Bible, it worked on different levels at the same time.
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Charles Cummings, Monastic Practices, CS 75 (Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1986), 14-15. In a letter to his patron Can Grande della Scala, the poet Dante explained that his Divine Comedy could be read both literally and allegorically; and that the allegorical meaning could be subdivided into the moral and the anagogical.
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To the most widely mentioned edition Crampon and Péronne added complementary annotations from later interpreters. All of the aforementioned commentaries are great in scope. They explain not only the literal, but also the allegorical, tropological, and anagogical senses of the Sacred Scriptures and provide numerous quotations of the Church Fathers and mediaeval interpreters.
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There is also the literal, allusion-based and anagogical meanings of the text which are referred to as "Peshat", "Remez" and "Derash" respectively. When the 4th category is added, the acrostic forms the four-fold exegetical method called PaRDeS ("Paradise") which can be achieved once one understands the Torah in all four modes of interpretation.
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The Zohar gives the word a mystical interpretation, and associates it with the four kinds of Biblical exegesis: peshat (literal meaning), remez (allusion), derash (anagogical), and sod (mystic). The initial letters of those four words then form – p(a)rd(e)s, which was in turn felt to represent the fourfold interpretation of the Torah (in which sod – the mystical interpretation – ranks highest).
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This type of interpretation is more often known as mystical interpretation. It claims to explain the events of the Bible and how they relate to or predict what the future holds. This is evident in the Jewish Kabbalah, which attempts to reveal the mystical significance of the numerical values of Hebrew words and letters. In Judaism, anagogical interpretation is also evident in the medieval Zohar.
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After this violent repudiation of Victorine pedagogical tradition the abbey was, in effect, a self-contained Augustinian priory like any other.R. N. Swanson, The Twelfth Century Renaissance (1999), p. 19 Jan van Ruusbroec submitted his Groenendael Priory to their Rule in 1335, from which stemmed the Brethren of the Common Life and Thomas à Kempis' Devotio Moderna. A major theme of their studies was the anagogical relationship between the Divine and the Mundane, adopted by Pope Eugene IV in his 5.1.
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M. Cunningham and E. Theokritoff; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 21-34. The Roman Catholic Church divides hermeneutic into four senses: the literal, allegorical, moral, and anagogical; however, interpretation is always subject to the Church's magisterium. The process for determining the original meaning of the text is through examination of the grammatical and syntactical aspects, the historical background, the literary genre as well as theological (canonical) considerations. The historical-grammatical method distinguishes between the one original meaning of the text and its significance.
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In this essay, Umberto Eco describes a special kind of musical works that can be organized and re-organized by the performers before they are played to the audience. He then applied this idea of "open works" to literary texts and other works of art. Every work of art can be read, according to Eco, in three distinct ways: the moral, the allegorical and the anagogical. Each is not only distinct but can be fully anticipated and directed by the author (or the artist) of the work.
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Allegorical interpretation of the Bible is an interpretive method (exegesis) that assumes that the Bible has various levels of meaning and tends to focus on the spiritual sense, which includes the allegorical sense, the moral (or tropological) sense, and the anagogical sense, as opposed to the literal sense. It is sometimes referred to as the quadriga, a reference to the Roman chariot that was drawn by four horses. Allegorical interpretation has its origins in both Greek thought and the rabbinical schools of Judaism. In the Middle Ages, it was used by Bible commentators of Christianity.
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Second, Ansai employs an allegorical interpretation of the text, by analogically equating symbols he found within Shinto texts as expressions of Confucian truths. Third, Ansai interpreted the texts on a moral level, drawing ethical paradigms out of Shinto myths. The last level was anagogical, whereby Ansai argued for the supremacy of the Japanese nation (relative to all others), using his own interpretations of Shinto texts. Although often Ansai is criticized for his 'torturous rationalizations" found in Suika Shinto, Ooms argues that what distinguishes Ansai from other Neo-Confucian scholars of his time was the "systematic structure of his thought.
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English Dominicans sought to gain a full knowledge of Christ through an imitation of His life. English mystics of all types tended to focus on the moral values that the events in Christ's life exemplified. This led to a "progressive understanding of the meanings of Scripture—literal, moral, allegorical, and anagogical"—that was contained within the mystical journey itself. From these considerations of Scripture comes the simplest way to imitate Christ: an emulation of the moral actions and attitudes that Jesus demonstrated in His earthly ministry becomes the most significant way to feel and have knowledge of God.
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The Divine Comedy can be described simply as an allegory: each canto, and the episodes therein, can contain many alternative meanings. Dante's allegory, however, is more complex, and, in explaining how to read the poem – see the Letter to Cangrande – he outlines other levels of meaning besides the allegory: the historical, the moral, the literal, and the anagogical. The structure of the poem is also quite complex, with mathematical and numerological patterns distributed throughout the work, particularly threes and nines, which are related to the Holy Trinity. The poem is often lauded for its particularly human qualities: Dante's skillful delineation of the characters he encounters in Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise; his bitter denunciations of Florentine and Italian politics; and his powerful poetic imagination.
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One clause in the Jerusalem Talmud asserts that anything which a veteran disciple shall teach was already given at Sinai; and a story in the Babylonian Talmud claims that upon seeing the immensely intricate deduction of future Rabbi Akiva in a vision, Moses himself was at loss, until Akiva proclaimed that everything he teaches was handed over to Moses. The Written and Oral Torah are believed to be intertwined and mutually reliant, for the latter is a source to many of the divine commandments, and the text of the Pentateuch is seen as incomprehensible in itself. God's will may only be surmised by appealing to the Oral Torah revealing the text's allegorical, anagogical, or tropological meaning, not by literalist reading. Lacunae in received tradition or disagreements between early sages are attributed to disruptions, especially persecutions which caused to that "the Torah was forgotten in Israel" — according to rabbinic lore, these eventually compelled the legists to write down the Oral Law in the Mishna and Talmud.
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Christian writers, trained in anagogical thinking and expecting to find spiritual instruction inherent in the processes of Nature, disregarded the caveat in Pliny's Natural History,Historia NaturalisIX.2. where the idea is presented as a "vulgar opinion": > Hence it is that the vulgar notion may very possibly be true, that whatever > is produced in any other department of Nature, is to be found in the sea as > well; while, at the same time, many other productions are there to be found > which nowhere else exist. That there are to be found in the sea the forms, > not only of terrestrial animals, but of inanimate objects even, is easily to > be understood by all who will take the trouble to examine the grape-fish, > the sword-fish, the sawfish, and the cucumber-fish, which last so strongly > resembles the real cucumber both in colour and in smell.Translation of John > Bostock and Henry Thomas Riley Pliny points out that many more things are found in the sea than on the land, and also mentions the correspondences that may be discovered between many non- living objects of the land and living creatures in the sea.
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These six medallions contain additional symbols of acts of Christian kindness: # two crutches suggest Visiting the sick as a work of mercy # hiker's walking stick with travel pouch suggests Hospitality to strangers # a loaf of bread, fish and a pitcher of water and wine represent Feed the hungry, quench the thirsty # chains indicate Care for the incarcerated # Christ's garments evoke Clothe the naked # a coffin reminds us to Bury the dead This visual interpretation encapsulates the personal piety of rural peasants, many illiterate, for whom salvation history was expressed in these crucial aspects of God's loving relationship with us and the Christian duty to love of neighbor. Sanctifying grace flows from the Paschal Victim on the Cross, an image Nicholas described in his vision by the stream,Webland.ch where the Tabernacle sits atop a spring that flows forth covering the earth, echoing the rivers flowing from the Temple in Ezekiel's visions. Such profound insights on the allegorical,RTF Study Program - Lesson 2: The Four Senses of Sacred Scripture anagogical and tropological senses of scripture are often lost in modern biblical exegesis that focuses too narrowly on the literal sense, the historical-critical method.
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