I am sure there is going to be a lot of background in the various prefaces, but just in case I thought I'd mention the four meanings of writing that Dante himself wrote about (to Cangrande della Scala as a sort of preface to the
Commedia, and previously in in the
Convivio).
He argued that in his work there were multiple
senses of meaning, the first literal, that is the immediate meaning conveyed by each sentence, while the second is the deeper meaning that he wants to convey, which can be allegorical, moral or anagogical. The last three together can be called all allegorical.
I've found
this translation of the relevant part of the
Convivio, Chapter 1 of book 2, which clarifies that not all statements can have all four meanings - yet this is also possible. To see how, in the letter to Cangrande Dante provides:
Quote:
To elucidate, then, what we have to say, be it known that the sense of this work is not simple, but on the contrary it may be called polysemous, that is to say, 'of more senses than one'; for it is one sense which we get through the letter, and another which we get through the thing the letter signifies; and the first is called literal, but the second allegorical or mystic. And this mode of treatment, for its better manifestation, may be considered in this verse:
'When lsrael came out of Egypt, and the house of Jacob from a people of strange speech, Judaea became his sanctification, Israel his power.'
For if we inspect the letter alone the departure of the children of Israel from Egypt in the time of Moses is presented to us; if the allegory, our redemption wrought by Christ; if the moral sense, the conversion of the soul from the grief and misery of sin to the state of grace is presented to us; if the anagogical, the departure of the holy soul from the slavery of this corruption to the liberty of eternal glory is presented to us.
And although these mystic senses have each their special denominations, they may all in general be called allegorical, since they differ from the literal and historical; for allegory is derived from alleon, in Greek, which means the same as the Latin alienum or diversum.
When we understand this we see clearly that the subject round which the alternative senses play must be twofold. And we must therefore consider the subject of this work as literally understood, and then its subject as allegorically intended. The subject of the whole work, then, taken in the literal sense only, is 'the state of souls after death,' without qualification, for the whole progress of the work hinges on it and about it. Whereas if the work be taken allegorically the subject is 'man, as by good or ill desserts, in the exercise of the freedom of his choice, he becomes liable to rewarding or punishing justice.'
|
(from
here).
Having said this, I think that concentrating too much on extricating all the meanings detracts from the enjoyment of the text.
EDIT - sorry, one other point: as I guess most commentaries will mention, in Dante punishment of sinners is by "contrappasso", which can be either by analogy or by contrast (in the first case, the punishment is somewhat similar in spirit to the sin - e.g. the lustful that were overcome by the tempest of their lust are battered by a real tempest; in the second case the punishment is opposite in spirit, e.g. the sullen, who were apathetic in life, are condemned to run after a flag). However in modern parlance the
legge del contrappasso/contrappasso law, a quite common expression in Italian, invariably refers to contrappasso by contrast - to the point that I had forgotten that it could also mean analogy
