Validity in Interpretation

Front Cover
Yale University Press, Jan 1, 1967 - Philosophy - 287 pages
"Here is a book that brings logic to the most unruly of disciplines, literary interpretation. . . . This study is a necessary took for anyone who wants to talk sense about literature."--Virginia Quarterly Review

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.

From inside the book

Contents

IN DEFENSE OF THE AUTHOR
1
It Does Not Matter What an Author Means
10
MEANING AND IMPLICATION
24
Symptomatic Meanings
51
THE CONCEPT OF GENRE
68
UNDERSTANDING INTERPRETATION
127
B Understanding Interpretation and History
133
Judgment and Criticism
139
PROBLEMS AND PRINCIPLES OF VALIDATION
164
OBJECTIVE INTERPRETATION
209
GADAMERS THEORY OF INTERPRETATION
245
AN EXCURSUS ON TYPES
265
Index
275
Copyright

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