Hermeneutics and Phenomenology of Reception
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HERMENEUTICS AND PHENOMENOLOGY OF RECEPTION By MICHAEL ECKERI A DISSERTATION PRESENTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA 1984 CLOV: What is there to keep me here? HAMM: The dialogue. —SAMUEL BECKETT, Endgame . TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT INTRODUCTION 1 Notes 9 CHAPTER 1: THE HERMENEUTIC ENTERPRISE l<j Background and History Revisionist Hermeneutics and Conflict in Interpretation. ... 18 Notes 32 CHAPTER 2: PHENOMENOLOGY 35 Background and History Phenomenology and the Geneva Critics The Ontology of the Literary Work 52 Conclusion SO Notes CHAPTER 3: READER-RESPONSE AND RECEPTION THEORY 65 Principles of Reader -Response Criticism 65 Stanley Fish(es) for Readers 63 Iser a Text in This Class? • ^5 Truth and Method: Gadamer's Strange Bedfellows S2 Jauss^s Perception of Reception S7 Conclusion Notes 97 CHAPTER 4: BRIDGING THE GAPS 101 Notes 11'^ CHAPTER 5: IRONY AS A MEDIATING STRATEGY IN THE CANTERBURY TALES 120 Understanding The Canterbury Tales : A First Reading 123 Interpreting The Canterbury Tales : A Second Reading 127 Applying The Canterbury Tales : A Third Reading 138 In Retrospect Notes 1^6 CHAPTER 6: THE AESTHETIC METAPHOR AS A MEDIATING DEVICE IN HAMLET 1^8 Understanding Hamlet 152 Interpreting Hamlet 154 Applying Hamlet 167 In Retrospect 1''^ Notes 1''^ 111 AS A MEDIATING DEVICE IN A PORTRAIT CHAPTER 7 : NARRATIVE STYLE OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN 179 Understanding A Portrait Interpreting A Portrait Applying A Portrait In Retrospect 206 Notes^ AFTERWORD BIBLIOGRAPHY '^"'-^ BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH iv Abstract of Dissertation Presented to the Graduate School of the University of Florida in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy HERMENEUTICS AND PHENOMENOLOGY OF RECEPTION By Michael Eckert April 1984 Chairman: Alistair Duckworth Major Department: English The proliferation of critical theories during the last few decades has caused many teachers to wonder how best to introduce students to literature while also teaching them the aesthetic and historical back- ground which makes meaningful interpretation possible. It seems that an interpretive approach is needed which capitalizes on basic presuppositions regarding literary works, but which can also facilitate modification and enlargement of those presuppositions, thus leading the student interpreter toward more complete understanding of the work and his or her relationship to it. The most useful methodologies for the realization of this hermen- eutic objective seem to be phenomenology and reader-response criticism, both of which adapt the dialogical model of hermeneutics to the pursuit of intersubjective, humanistic interpretations. A synthesis of these method- ologies, modeled on Hans Robert Jauss's aesthetic of reception, provides an interpretive approach which is useful for students who are approaching literature systematically for the first time. Such an approach should be V valid with virtually any literary work, of any genre, from any period, Hamlet and so the works chosen for illustration—The Canterbury Tales , , and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man—represent generic and histor- ical diversity. The interpretive approach, consisting of three stages of reading which correspond to the hermeneutic moments of understanding, interpretation, and application, yields readings of these texts which are complex, initially ambiguous, but finally rich in humanistic and aesthetic affirmation. Presuming that teachers endeavor to imbue their students with such affirmation, and that students approach literature with comple- mentary presuppositions, such results justify the methodology and presup- positions that precede them. vi — INTRODUCTION Reading literature can be an insufferably frustrating experience to many students; writing about literature can be absolutely maddening. Consequently, teaching literature and how to write about it presents several challenges to professors of English. First, and perhaps most important, students need to overcome their feelings of alienation from the literary work. They need to learn that no matter how far removed, temporally or culturally, that work seems to be from their experience, something immediate in the act of reading can erase the apparent bound- aries separating them from the work. Second, students need to acquire various mechanical and analytical skills, such as recognition of rhetorical devices and structural elements, for interpreting literary works. Finally, and perhaps most problematic, they need to learn some method of critical response which enables them to view literature as something more than a cultural artifact. In short, they need to learn how to experience literature as part of the cultural tradition to which they belong, and the teacher's responsibility is to increase the chance that what Wayne Booth calls "critical understanding" will replace, "on the one hand, sentimental and uncritical identifications that leave minds undisturbed and, on the other, hypercritical negations that freeze or alienate. ,.1 Of course, the molding process is most apparent in graduate semi- nars; undergraduates, especially freshmen encountering literature systematically for the first time, are generally taught dictatorially 2 they must swallow the teacher's critical position (if the teacher has a position) whole or be forever alienated, precisely because so many of them lack the intuition or the historical sense to see the study of literature as a continuation of a humanistic tradition which spans centuries. Can we teachers overcome such a deficiency? Can we channel the native intelligence and sensitivity of most of our students into some kind of positive response to what they read? We can if we do not doubt the importance of that moment of critical understanding which occurs when the student succeeds in entering another mind and extracting from it nourishment for his or her own. In order to promote this desired effect, we must have some coherent theory of critical response, some theory which describes and guides our attempts at enlarging and restructuring human experience through literature. The plethora of critical theories currently available presents a formidable obstacle to many students and teachers of literature. The formerly insulated critical world has admitted many voices: formalist, existential, structuralist, deconstructive. Each voice attains popular- ity depending on the rhetorical skill of its proponents and the predisposition of its adherents. Yet despite this Babel of critical voices, most critics are engaged in pretty much the same activity—trying to understand literature, either as a genre or a particular work or author. They are, in effect, practicing hermeneutics in that they seek to understand. The Babel ensues because they are motivated by different presuppositions about what constitutes understanding and how it can be located. The ends are similar; only the means vary. My purpose is to formulate an approach to critical understanding which emphasizes the shared goal while distinguishing among some of the different methodologies. I have elected to focus on an essentially homogeneous set of philosophical and critical strategies —hermeneutics, phenomenology, and reader-response criticism. My choice is determined largely by my theoretical presupposition— that literary criticism is an essentially humanistic endeavor — and by certain marked congruencies among these strategies which increase the probability of critical understanding for the student using them. I do not suggest that any strategy by itself is sufficient; rather, synthesizing these strategies to supplement one another yields the best results. Nor do I claim that a synthesis yields the one "true" approach; instead, the synthesis capitalizes on the innate interests of a reader in producing a viable approach. My organizational strategy can best be described as bipartite: theory and praxis. The first part is composed of four chapters, the first three of which metacritically discuss and analyze the chosen strategies, as well as present some history of each and highlight their congruencies. The first chapter deals with the hermeneutic enterprise. While not, strictly speaking, a critical strategy, hermeneutics does serve to identify the goal of most criticism—understanding a work's meaning. I have chosen to present this discussion by highlighting the opposition between objective and subjective hermeneutics, whose chief proponents are E. D. Hirsch on the one hand, and Martin Heidegger and Hans-Georg Gadamer on the other. I also introduce Hans Robert Jauss, whose project for reviving literary hermeneutics through an aesthetics of reception attempts to reconcile the objective and subjective practition- ers. Heidegger and Gadamer are influenced by phenomenology, and that connection serves as a transition to the second chapter. This chapter on phenomenology reviews the major thinkers who have contributed to our 4 current understanding of that term and examines the split between the Geneva School "critics of consciousness" and the phenomeno logical ontologists. In this chapter I have addressed the concern of phenomen- ologists for the contribution of the individual reader to the hermeneutic enterprise, and this emphasis leads logically to the third chapter, on reader -response criticism. In this chapter I examine the consonance between phenomenology and reader-response criticism, especially as it is formulated by