ABSTRACT
IT WAS THE growth and triumph of the literal way of looking at the world and theology, which marginalised the allegorical, symbolic approach. The literal way grew and flourished between the twelfth-century renaissance and the end of the Middle Ages. Literalism – by the use of this word I do not wish to imply that there was a formal philosophy of the literal; it is only shorthand for the literal way of looking at life. Literalism involves taking the things of this world seriously, the visible and the transitory, the historical and the actual. From this it followed that the experiences of men and women and their emotions were to be taken seriously. Literalism in this regard is like Renaissance humanism but does not have the same attachment to the antique, to the classical world, which is usually reckoned to be part of humanism or at least its concomitant.
