The Hermeneutic Circle and the Art of Interpretation

IN THE TWENTIETH century every new mode of literary interpretation has issued from or resulted in theoretical formulation. Realizing that theory leads to theories of theory, remote from the immediacy of literature, some recent critics have ignored or condemned such discussion. But theoreticians, like the Eumenides, pursue them. For the postpluralist critic, innocence is impossible. A refusal to recognize or admit that all criticism involves presuppositions, says Roland Barthes, is the major (if not original) sin in criticism, and can only be seen as guilty silence; it is self-deception or bad faith. Those who do not discuss their own methods are condemned to seeing them analyzed by someone else. The purpose of such analysis is to determine how assumptions about literature affect the interpretive process. Despite their disagreement about other problems, recent theorists display remarkable unanimity in their treatment of this one, and their conclusions may lead, for better or worse, to an end of theorizing about theory. Their argument is as follows: any discussion of literary meaning entails assumptions that are in principle separable from the criticism embodying them. Assumptions establish the boundaries of coherent critical discourse and con

Art · Epistemology · Interpretation (philosophy) · Linguistics · Literature · Classical Philosophy and Thought · Hermeneutics and Narrative Identity · History · Philosophy

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