The range of interpretation / Wolfgang Iser.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Iser, Wolfgang.

Series:

Wellek Library lecture series at the University of California, Irvine

Wellek Library lectures

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Literature--History and criticism--Theory, etc.

Literature.

Translating and interpreting.

Interpretation (Philosophy).

Canon (Literature).

Physical Description:

xv, 206 pages ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

New York : Columbia University Press, [2000]

Summary:

There is a tacit assumption that interpretation comes naturally, that human beings live by constantly interpreting. In this sense, we might even rephrase Descartes by saying: We interpret, therefore we are. While such a basic human disposition makes interpretation appear to come naturally, the forms it takes, however, do not. In this work, Iser offers a fresh approach by formulating an "anatomy of interpretation" through which we can understand the act of interpretation in its many different manifestations.

Contents:

The Marketplace of Interpretation 1

Interpretation as Translatability 5

2. The Authority of the Canon 13

Canonization and Midrash 13

The Literary Canon: Dr. Johnson on Shakespeare 28

3. The Hermeneutic Circle 41

Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher: Self-Reflective Circularity 41

Johann Gustav Droysen: The Nesting of Circles 55

Paul Ricoeur: Transactional Loops 69

4. The Recursive Loop 83

Recursion in Ethnographic Discourse 83

Systemic Recursion 99

5. The Traveling Differential: Franz Rosenzweig, The Star of Redemption 113

"The Birth of the Elements Out of the Somber Foundations of Nought" 113

Proliferating Translatability 134

6. Configurations of Interpretation: An Epilogue 145

The Emergence of a Cross-Cultural Discourse: Thomas Carlyle's Sartor Resartus 159

Enfoldings in Paterian Discourse: Modes of Translatability 181.

Notes:

A revision and expansion of the Wellek Library lectures given by the author in the spring of 1994.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

023111902X

OCLC:

42022337