Interpretation and allegory : antiquity to the modern period A retrospective forward : interpretation allegory and historical change Jon Whitman Present perspectives : antiquity to the late Middle Ages Jon Whitman Language text and truth in ancient polytheist exegesis Robert Lamberton Platos soul and the body of the text in Philo and Origen David Dawson Theology and exegesis in Midrashic literature Marc Hirshman Allegory and reading Gods book : Paul and Augustine on the destiny of Israel Paula Fredriksen The utilization of allegory in Islamic philosophy Alfred L. Ivry On Maimonides allegorical readings of scripture Warren Zev Harvey Philosophic allegory in medieval Jewish culture : the crisis in Languedoc (1304 6) Gregg Stern Philosophy commentary and mythic narrative in twelfth century France Winthrop Wetherbee Quadruplex sensus multiplex modus : scriptural sense and mode in medieval Scholastic exegesis A.J. Minnis Present perspectives : the late Middle Ages to the modern period Jon Whitman Allegory and divine names in ecstatic Kabbalah Moshe Idel Boccaccio : the mythographer of the city Giuseppe F. Mazzotta Renaissance hieroglyphic studies : an overview Charles Dempsey Sixteenth century emblems and imprese as indicators of cultural change Peter M. Daly Vera narratio : Vicos new science of mythology Joseph Mali Allegory as the trope of memory : registers of cultural time in Schlegel and Novalis Azade Seyhan Constructions of allegory allegories of construction : rethinking history through Benjamin and Freud Rainer Nägele Allegory and the aesthetic ideology Tobin Siebers An investigation of the theory and practice of interpretation. Concentrating on interpretive allegory the volume opens and organizes new approaches to over 2000 years of critical change. Its topics extend from pagan Jewish Christian and Islamic perspectives to postmodern inquiries