Home Duke University Press
 QUICK SEARCH:   [advanced]


     
  Home | Help | Feedback | Subscriptions | Archive | Search | Table of Contents


Poetics Today 2000 21(4):621-632; DOI:10.1215/03335372-21-4-621
This Article
Right arrow Full Text (PDF)
Right arrow References
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrow reprints & permissions
Citing Articles
Right arrow Citing Articles via HighWire
Right arrow Citing Articles via Google Scholar
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Schmidt, S. J.
Right arrow Search for Related Content
Duke University Press

Harshav Festschrift Issue II

Interpretation: The Story Does Have an Ending

Siegfried J. Schmidt

Communication Science, Münster

ABSTRACT

The academic debate on the interpretation of literary texts has always suffered from the semantic ambiguity of key concepts (literature, meaning, interpretation, literary study, etc.). To get out of this dead end, literary scholars have to step back from their daily routine from time to time to consider what kind of activity they are actually engaged in, since nothing in academia is natural or self-evident; instead, all is contingent. That is, scholars are not talking about literary texts as givens or data; they are talking about problems they have with what they deem literary items. If literary scholars aim at a scientific solution for their respective problems, they have to meet the usual standards of science; that is, they have to solve explicitly spelled-out problems via explicit problem-solving strategies or methods. This holds equally true for all problems subsumed under the title "interpretation." The point is not can interpretation be reasonable, possible, or neglectable; rather, can literary scholars perform the operation called interpretation in terms of theory-guided operationalized productions of experiential knowledge which can be stabilized in respective scholarly discourses via communicative connectability and intersubjective inspection.




This article has been cited by other articles:


Home page
Poetics TodayHome page
H. Adler and S. Gross
Adjusting the Frame: Comments on Cognitivism and Literature
Poetics Today, June 1, 2002; 23(2): 195 - 220.
[Abstract] [PDF]




  Home | Help | Feedback | Subscriptions | Archive | Search | Table of Contents


Copyright 2000 by Porter Institute for Poetics and Semiotics, Tel Aviv University