Erich Auerbach’s take on the study of the figura is not independent from the historical moment of anti-Judaism he was living in.
Sometimes it is good –necessary, indeed– to read what one has written with a critical eye.
The Smithfield Decretals are currently preserved in the British Library.
Both marginal micro-literatures and mysticism offer themselves as a modus loquendi a way of speaking, and a modus agenda (a way of acting) that comments upon or speaks to a center and speaks it otherwise.
I want to cross over to the other track, for a moment to think about the language of law and margins so as to provide a few “crossovers” for our topics.
On the margins of this article, there are pdf’s to two commentaries of the Song of Songs, that of the Spanish rabbi Arragel, who translated, commented, and painted a Bible for the Duke of Alba in the early 15th century, and an edition of the Bible with the Ordinary Gloss and the commentaries of Nicholas of Lyra.
Bibles, however, are also folders and full archives of individual persons and sometimes their families.
Fictio legis, however, is a technique, an art.
Perplexity can be enormously productive.
So, in this first game, there is something easy to do.