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- Title
The Appeal to the Text: What Are We Appealing to?
- Authors
Juhl, P.D.
- Abstract
In the following, I want to examine the relation between such facts and an interpretation of a work. If textual features constitute evidence as to what a literary work means, then there must be some connection between the two which makes it possible for such features to be evidence for an interpretation. The question is: what connection? Furthermore, we require an interpretation to be able to account in some plausible way P. D. JUHL is assistant professor of Germanic Languages and Literatures at Princeton University. for the various textual features of a work. What kind of explanation are we asking for? And what must we be saying in claiming that a work means so-and-so in order for that claim to be able to provide an explanation of this kind? By giving an answer to these questions, I hope to illuminate our concept of the meaning of a literary work. <BR> What I shall say is not intended to provide a general method for interpreting literary works or for resolving interpretive controversies; rather my aim is to help clarify what such controversies are about, to shed light on the logic of interpretation by showing what a claim about the meaning of a literary work entails. Stated in a slightly different way, I am concerned with what kind of statement we are making in saying of a literary work that it means so-and so, and hence with the question what claim or claims an interpretation logically commits us to, in the sense that an interpretation will be wrong unless these claims are true.
- Subjects
LITERATURE; INTERPRETATION (Philosophy) in art
- Publication
Journal of Aesthetics & Art Criticism, 1978, Vol 36, Issue 3, p277
- ISSN
0021-8529
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.2307/430438