Indeed, the Somnium, as Hallyn concludes, charts the anamorphic allegory of Copernicanism precisely as a nest of geometrically configured Chinese boxes which, it must be stressed, thematize another essence of what rhetoric called allegoria--allos agourein, "saying other." The nesting of discursive or narrative shells or boxes, one within another, recalls the Augustinian cliche of the occulted allegorical text, one which always demands that the initiated reader be able to penetrate beyond
integumentum into substantia, beyond lettera into spiritus.
Di qui una teoria della conoscenza intesa ad attingere la realta, liberandola dalla scorza o
integumentum, in cui si cela, per risalire, attraverso raggio luminoso, alla virtus irraggiante di Dio.