Dalla sensibilità all’intelletto: osservazioni sull’allegoria nel Llibre de contemplació

Interpretations of chapters 352-357 of the Llibre de Contemplació have given a privileged place to the role of allegory according to the sense codified in rhetoric and Biblical hermeneutics. Following Lullian indications one sees that this is only one component of a new interpretative, demonstrative and compositional method developed in this section, a method which Llull insistently qualifies as moral. The polysemy of this word is based on the connection with exegesis (exposició moral is identified with tropology; exposició moral entel·lectual includes all the superior senses as well as the literal one), on the operations of the powers and morality understood as the exercise of the vices and the virtues. In designing the path leading to contemplation, Llull has recourse to contemporary terminology, submitting it, however, to a constant translation with regard either to the signification, by means of definitions, or to the use of concrete applications. Instead of a “theory and practice of allegory” we should speak of “a theory and practice of an art moral” which finds its basic foundation in analogy.