Signs of madness

In the following quote from Foucault's madness book, we glimpse something of Walter Benajmin's world of allegory -

The dawn of madness on the horizon of the Renaissance is first perceptible in the decay of Gothic symbolism; as if the world, whose network of spiritual meanings was so close knit, had begun to unravel, showing faces whose meaning was no longer clear.. Freed from wisdom and from the teaching that organised it, the image begins to gravitate about its own madness.

Paradoxically, this liberation derives from a proliferation of meaning, from a self-multiplication of significance weaving relationships so numerous, so intertwined, so rich, that they can no longer be deiphered except in the esotericism of knowledge

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