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Erasmus and the Hermeneutics of Linguistic Praxis

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Mary Jane Barnett
Mary Jane Barnett*
Affiliation:
Georgetown University
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Extract

Erasmian hermeneutics are notoriously difficult to describe clearly because Erasmus is always looking in two directions at once — both toward the ideal, perfectly expressive Word and toward the multitude of imperfect, human words caught in the tumult of history and transmission. In the Enchiridion(1503), a relatively early work, he argues that words inevitably fall short of their task of miming the Logos, that the smallness of the manna rained down on theIsraelites in Exodus 16 “signifies the lowliness of speech that conceals immense mysteries in almost crude language.” Erasmus believes in an essential connection of some kind between res and verbum, but it is clear that he holds as well to the Platonic view that this connection is always necessarily inadequate, that there can be an approach but never an arrival at complete meaning through human language.

Type
Studies
Information
Renaissance Quarterly , Volume 49 , Issue 3 , Autumn 1996 , pp. 542 - 572
Copyright
Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 1996

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