Validity in Interpretation

Published by Yale University Press 1996

Validity in Interpretation

Edited by: Sarah Spence

https://doi.org/10.12987/9780300157390

Overview
Contents

About this book

By demonstrating the uniformity and universality of the principles of valid interpretation of verbal texts of any sort, this closely reasoned examination provides a theoretical foundation for a discipline that is fundamental to virtually all humanistic studies. It defines the grounds on which textual interpretation can claim to establish objective knowledge, defends that claim against such skeptical attitudes as historicism and psychologism, and shows that many confusions can be avoided if the distinctions between meaning and significance, interpretation and criticism are correctly understood. It provides perhaps the first genuinely comprehensive account of hermeneutic theory to appear in English and the first systematic presentation of the principles of valid interpretation in any language.

Mr. Hirsch, associate professor of English at the University of Virginia, is the author of Wordsworth and Schelling and Innocence and Experience: An Introduction to Blake.

“Here is a book that brings logic to the most unruly of disciplines, literary interpretation. Viewing this subject within the tradition of hermeneutics, Mr. Hirsch is able to trace its origins and development with brilliant insight. The result is a lucidly systemic and authoritative account of the premises and procedures applicable to the interpretation of a literary text. Mr. Hirsch has performed a monumental service thereby that of reinstating the credentials of objectivism and defining the limits of the aesthetics of truth. This study is a necessary took for anyone who wants to talk sense about literature.”—Virginia Quarterly Review
“Professor Hirsch demonstrates convincingly that objectivity is attainable in humane studies, and that it is not identified with the subject but with the evidence. A valid interpretation is not necessarily a correct one, but one which is more probably than any other on the basis of existing evidence. He makes a subtle and important distinction between a text’s ‘meaning’ (which does not change) and its ‘significance’ (which does), and brilliantly relates meaning to understanding (the necessary preliminary to interpretation) and interpretation to explanation…” In short, this is a work which future students of literary theory cannot afford to neglect.”—Notes and Queries
E.D. Hirsch, Jr., is professor of English at the University of Virginia.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
PREFACE Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	vii
TABLE OF CONTENTS Publicly Available Download PDF	xiii
1. IN DEFENSE OF THE AUTHOR Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
2. MEANING AND IMPLICATION Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	24
3. THE CONCEPT OF GENRE Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	68
4. UNDERSTANDING, INTERPRETATION, AND CRITICISM Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	127
5. PROBLEMS AND PRINCIPLES OF VALIDATION Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	164
APPENDIX I. OBJECTIVE INTERPRETATION Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	209
APPENDIX II. GADAMER'S THEORY OF INTERPRETATION Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	245
APPENDIX III. AN EXCURSUS ON TYPES Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	265
INDEX Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	275

Language: English
Publisher: Yale University Press

eBook

Published: February 12, 2018
ISBN: 9780300157390