The medieval commentators on Scripture found three kinds of meaning in the literal level of the sacred text: one they called allegorical, in which one fact pointed to another; one they called tropological, or moral, which had to do with what should be done; and one they called analogical, which had to do with the Divine life and our participation in it. Although this was a method applied to biblical exegesis, it was also an attitude toward all of creation, and a way of reading nature which included most possibilities, and I think it is this enlarged view of the human scene that the fiction writer has to cultivate if he is ever going to write stories that have any chance of becoming a permanent pat of our literature. It seems to be a paradox that the larger and more complex the personal view, the easier it is to compress it into fiction.
-Flannery O’Connor, The Nature and Aim of Fiction, from Mystery and Manners, pp. 72-73
I don’t agree with medieval biblical interpretation for the most part. What a shocker. But I never considered that such a method could be applied to nature and general experience. I knew that stories operated on a number of meaningful levels, but never thought of trying to quantify that in any way.
O’Connor is making the case that fiction-writing can contain layers of meaning. In this context, one story can have allegorical, moral, and spiritual dimensions; and they don’t necessarily have to be overt.
Do you think the medieval theologians read too much into meaning and we don’t read enough?
I think it’s safe to say that’s true. I think folks like you and me tend to pin meaning down as simply propositional statements (wholly objective); and conversely, I think most modern people tend to view meaning as wholly subjective and malleable, depending on their whims at any given moment.
The point is that meaning can be much more complex than either of those views would allow it to be; and we should take advantage of that in our writing, and, I would add, demonstrate that in our preaching (by rigorously applying texts).