Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-ndw9j Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-19T09:28:15.457Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Conflict of Interpretations and the Limits of Pluralism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Paul B. Armstrong
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The debate about validity in interpretation has pitted monism against pluralism. Some theorists insist that any literary work has a single, determinate meaning, and others argue that there are no limits to the readings a text allows. Neither view adequately describes the field of conflicting interpretations. Critics can and do have legitimate disagreements about literary works; yet we can also say that some readings are wrong, not simply different. The hermeneutic field is divided among conflicting systems of interpretation, each based on different presuppositions that decide what its procedures will disclose and what they will disguise. But several tests for validity–inclusiveness, efficacy, and intersubjectivity– act as constraints on reading and regulate claims to legitimacy. While these tests have limitations that prevent them from resolving all hermeneutic disagreements, literary criticism is nevertheless a rational, disciplined enterprise– though an inherently pluralistic one.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 98 , Issue 3 , May 1983 , pp. 341 - 352
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1983

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

Barthes, Roland. “The Death of the Author.” In his Image/Music/Text. Trans. Heath, Stephen. New York: Hill and Wang, 1977, 142–48.Google Scholar
Bloom, Harold, et al. Deconstruction and Criticism. New York: Continuum, 1979.Google Scholar
Booth, Wayne C. Critical Understanding: The Powers and Limits of Pluralism. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1979.Google Scholar
Booth, Wayne C. “The Limits of Pluralism.” Critical Inquiry 3 (1977):407–23.Google Scholar
Brooks, Cleanth. The Well Wrought Urn. 1947; rpt. London: Dennis Dobson, 1968.Google Scholar
Bultmann, Rudolf Karl. “The Problem of Hermeneutics.” In his Essays Philosophical and Theological. Trans. Greig, James C. G. New York: Macmillan, 1955, 234–61.Google Scholar
Collingwood, R. G. An Autobiography. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1939.Google Scholar
Conrad, Joseph. Lord Jim. Ed. Thomas C. Moser. 1900; rpt. New York: Norton, 1968.Google Scholar
de Man, Paul. Blindness and Insight. New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1971.Google Scholar
Eliot, T. S. “The Metaphysical Poets” (1921). In his Selected Essays 1917–1932. New York: Harcourt, 1932, 241–50.Google Scholar
Ellis, John M. The Theory of Literary Criticism: A Logical Analysis. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1974.Google Scholar
Fish, Stanley E. Is There a Text in This Class? Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1980.Google Scholar
Fish, Stanley E. “Normal Circumstances, Literal Language, Direct Speech Acts, the Ordinary, the Everyday, the Obvious, What Goes without Saying, and Other Special Cases.” Critical Inquiry 4 (1978): 625–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fish, Stanley E. “One More Time.” Critical Inquiry 6 (1980): 749–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fish, Stanley E. “A Reply to John Reichert; or, How to Stop Worrying and Learn to Love Interpretation.” Critical Inquiry 6 (1979): 173–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Foucault, Michel. “What Is an Author?” In Textual Strategies. Ed. Harari, Josué V. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell Univ. Press, 1979, 141–60.Google Scholar
Gadamer, Hans-Georg. Truth and Method. Trans. anon. New York: Seabury, 1975.Google Scholar
Graff, Gerald. Literature against Itself. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1979.Google Scholar
Graff, Gerald. Poetic Statement and Critical Dogma. Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern Univ. Press, 1970.Google Scholar
Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time. Trans. Macquarrie, John and Robinson, Edward. New York: Harper and Row, 1962.Google Scholar
Hirsch, E. D. Jr. The Aims of Interpretation. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1976.Google Scholar
Hirsch, E. D. Jr. Validity in Interpretation. New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1967.Google Scholar
Holland, Norman N. 5 Readers Reading. New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1975.Google Scholar
Ihde, Don. Hermeneutic Phenomenology: The Philosophy of Paul Ricoeur. Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern Univ. Press, 1971.Google Scholar
Ingarden, Roman. The Literary Work of Art. Trans. Grabowicz, George G. Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern Univ. Press, 1973.Google Scholar
Iser, Wolfgang. The Act of Reading. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1978.Google Scholar
Iser, Wolfgang. “The Reading Process: A Phenomenological Approach.” In his The Implied Reader. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1974, 274–94.Google Scholar
James, William. A Pluralistic Universe. 1909; rpt. Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1977.Google Scholar
James, William. The Will to Believe. 1897; rpt. Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1979.Google Scholar
Jauss, Hans Robert. Ästhetische Erfahrung und literarische Hermeneutik. München: Wilhelm Fink, 1977.Google Scholar
Kuhn, Thomas S. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Rev. ed. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1970.Google Scholar
Lentricchia, Frank. After the New Criticism. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1980.Google Scholar
Lévi-Strauss, Claude. “The Structural Study of Myth.” In his Structural Anthropology. Trans. Jacobson, Claire and Schoepf, Brooke Grundfest. Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor-Doubleday, 1967, 202–28.Google Scholar
Marx, Karl. “Introduction to a Critique of Political Economy.” In Karl Marx and Frederick Engels. The German Ideology. Ed. Arthur, C. J. New York: International Publishers, 1970, 124–51.Google Scholar
Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. Phenomenology of Perception. Trans. Smith, Colin. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1962.Google Scholar
Peirce, Charles Sanders. “The Fixation of Belief.” In the Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce. Ed. Charles Hartshorne and Paul Weiss. 1934; rpt. Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1965, 5:223–47.Google Scholar
Pepper, Stephen C. World Hypotheses: A Study in Evidence. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1942.Google Scholar
Pratt, Mary Louise. Toward a Speech Act Theory of Literary Discourse. Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 1977.Google Scholar
Reichert, John. “But That Was in Another Ball Park: A Reply to Stanley Fish.” Critical Inquiry 6 (1979): 164–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Reichert, John. “Making Sense of Interpretation.” Critical Inquiry 6 (1980):746–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Reichert, John. Making Sense of Literature. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1977.Google Scholar
Ricoeur, Paul. The Conflict of Interpretations. Ed. Ihde, Don. Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern Univ. Press, 1974.Google Scholar
Ricoeur, Paul. Freud and Philosophy. Trans. Savage, Denis. New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1970.Google Scholar
Said, Edward W. “The Problem of Textuality: Two Exemplary Positions.” Critical Inquiry 4 (1978): 673–714.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Spitzer, Leo. Linguistics and Literary History. Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1948.Google Scholar
Toulmin, Stephen. Human Understanding: The Collective Use and Evolution of Concepts. Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1972.Google Scholar
Wellek, René. “The New Criticism: Pro and Contra.” Critical Inquiry 4 (1978):611–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar