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Intentio operis: Reading Anonymous Texts

John Barton

in Ancient Egyptian Literature: Theory and Practice

Readers of ancient texts often assume that they are looking for the meaning intended by the author. Trends in modern literary theory, from the ‘New Criticism’ to structuralism and postmodern ... More

Readers of ancient texts often assume that they are looking for the meaning intended by the author. Trends in modern literary theory, from the ‘New Criticism’ to structuralism and postmodern deconstruction, have called this into question. In its place readers look either for meanings supposedly inherent to the text regardless of the author's intention, or for meanings attributable to the text through creative ‘readings’, without any implication that the text has a ‘real’ meaning. Theorising of this kind has been more typical of the study of modern literature than of ancient texts, but the fact that so much ancient writing is anonymous or pseudonymous might make it an even more suitable case for a literary-theoretical treatment. However, such reading can produce meanings that are completely arbitrary. The work of Umberto Eco can provide a middle way between a textual determinism and total arbitrariness, through his concept of the intentio operis.Less

William as Exegete

Timothy Bellamah, O.P.

in The Biblical Interpretation of William of Alton

Chapter 3 considers William’s exegesis. Thirteenth-century biblical interpretation was marked by an increasing interest in the literal sense and a progressive tendency to identify it with the ... More

Chapter 3 considers William’s exegesis. Thirteenth-century biblical interpretation was marked by an increasing interest in the literal sense and a progressive tendency to identify it with the author’s intention. William designates this sense as the intention of the divine author, which he in turn identifies with that of the human author. Even by the norms of his period, he is particularly keen to grasp it. For doing so, he uses several procedures for textual, linguistic, and rhetorical analysis and also considers the individual verse’s context within its passage, its chapter, its book, and the Bible as a whole. Spiritual interpretation is also integral to his exegetical project. His allegorical and tropological expositions are particularly revealing of his purpose of preparing students for preaching. All of this is consistent with his view of biblical history as a continuing reality encompassing even the present.Less

Intentionality and the Romantic Literary Manuscript

Michelle Levy

in Literary Manuscript Culture in Romantic Britain

Chapter 1 supplies an essential description of manuscript and print cultures in the Romantic period. It probes the attempts by book historians, manuscript scholars, and textual editors to establish ... More

Chapter 1 supplies an essential description of manuscript and print cultures in the Romantic period. It probes the attempts by book historians, manuscript scholars, and textual editors to establish guidelines for understanding modern literary manuscripts, that is, manuscripts created in the age of print. It questions conceptions of scribal culture that rest upon the scholar’s capacity to discern authorial intention, and that exclude from consideration those manuscripts intended for print. Donald Reiman, in his categorisation of modern manuscripts into three groups – private, confidential or social, and public – relies upon an editor’s ability to determine the intended audience of any given manuscript. However, as this chapter demonstrates, intention is rarely discernible. This chapter grounds its theoretical analysis in a detailed survey of the literary writing and material practices of Charlotte Smith and Dorothy Wordsworth, two authors who have long been regarded as belonging, respectively and exclusively, to the divided worlds of print and script.Less

Intentions and the Recovery of Meaning

in As Light Before Dawn: The Inner World of a Medieval Kabbalist

In his Me'irat 'Einayim, a metacommentary on Nahmanides' work Commentary on the Torah, Isaac ben Samuel of Akko interprets meaning as unfixed or flexible, but does not assert the full autonomy of the ... More

In his Me'irat 'Einayim, a metacommentary on Nahmanides' work Commentary on the Torah, Isaac ben Samuel of Akko interprets meaning as unfixed or flexible, but does not assert the full autonomy of the individual reader/interpreter. Rather, he argues that the legitimacy of each reading is determined by its reception from a reliable source, the “intention” of which should be clear to the recipient. Thus, despite the persistent argument for the instability of kabbalistic meaning on Isaac's part, he highly values “authorial” or “transmissional” intent. Me'irat 'Einayim is considerably taken up with the process of establishing Nahmanides' authorial intent with respect to a host of esoteric exegetical issues. The authenticity of Isaac's role as transmitter is contingent on his ability to theorize Nahmanides' real authorial intention. This chapter explores authorial intentions and meaning, as well as the self-perception of authorship and the act of writing in Me'irat 'Einayim.Less

Original Meanings and Historical Interpretation

Nicholas Jardine

in The Scenes of Inquiry: On the Reality of Questions in the Sciences

This chapter begins by reviewing the question-oriented account of historical understanding of explaining scenes of inquiry, local reality, and interpretation. It follows with an argument of an ... More

This chapter begins by reviewing the question-oriented account of historical understanding of explaining scenes of inquiry, local reality, and interpretation. It follows with an argument of an account that avoids the most blatant forms of hermeneutic circularity, unlike related question-oriented accounts. It then discusses the main topic, the relation between the explication of historical understanding and the craft of historical interpretation. In particular, it examines the validity of two additional criteria of adequacy of interpretation: faithfulness to authorial intention and imputation of consistency. It argues that the theoretical account pointed out in this chapter entails definite stances on these issues, and that these stances are in good accord with common sense and sound historical practice. The chapter concludes with a reflection on the prospects for extension of this account from the history of philosophy and the sciences to the history of writings in general.Less

The Peculiar Opportunities of English

Geoffrey Galt Harpham

in What Do You Think, Mr. Ramirez?: The American Revolution in Education

The American system gives extraordinary prominence not just to the humanities, but also to the discipline of English, which was thought to be the central discipline of the curriculum. In order to be ... More

The American system gives extraordinary prominence not just to the humanities, but also to the discipline of English, which was thought to be the central discipline of the curriculum. In order to be able to assume the responsibilities allotted to it in the post-WWII system, English had to be a discipline in which textual interpretation was the focus of both undergraduate pedagogy and research. Fortuitously, this was precisely the form that the discipline had taken in the United States. Less

Affecting Time

Tom Phillips

in Untimely Epic: Apollonius Rhodius' Argonautica

The first part of Chapter 1 examines the Argonautica’s intertextual relationships, especially but not exclusively with Homer, as a means of affording and shaping access to an imagined world, before ... More

The first part of Chapter 1 examines the Argonautica’s intertextual relationships, especially but not exclusively with Homer, as a means of affording and shaping access to an imagined world, before considering the figure of Heracles as an articulation of the poem’s concern with temporal change. The rest of the chapter focuses on Apollonius’ ‘philological’ poetics. Building on previous studies, it argues that Apollonius’ use of unusual words should be seen as a form of creative curiosity that draws readers into exercising their world-projecting capabilities. Responding to the poem’s particular version of authorial subjectivity also entails seeing the text as a multilayered expressive act. Both parts of the chapter make the case for seeing the temporal character of reading itself as a crucial source of meaning.Less

Letter versus Spirit

Martin Camper

in Arguing over Texts: The Rhetoric of Interpretation

Chapter 4 turns its attention to the stasis of letter versus spirit. Traditionally, this stasis has been understood as pitting the exact words of a text against the author’s intent, but the chapter ... More

Chapter 4 turns its attention to the stasis of letter versus spirit. Traditionally, this stasis has been understood as pitting the exact words of a text against the author’s intent, but the chapter expands the notion of spirit to include other animating forces of textual meaning, such as an overarching principle of interpretation brought by readers to the text. The chapter shows how both the letter and spirit of a text can be divided, with arguers disputing the text’s real versus apparent letter or the author’s real versus apparent intent. To demonstrate how arguers construe authorial intention for their own ends, the chapter analyzes the controversy during the 2008 presidential campaign over the “God damn America” sound bite extracted from a sermon preached by Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama’s then-pastor. Critics dismissed Wright’s defense of his intentions, pointing to the sermon’s exact wording as evidence of his, and by extension Obama’s, anti-Americanism.Less

There’s No Such Thing as Interpreting a Text

Martin Jay Stone

in New Directions in Law and Literature

Positively, this chapter sets out various structural differences between literary and legal interpretation. Negatively, it criticizes views of legal and literary interpretation that attempt to derive ... More

Positively, this chapter sets out various structural differences between literary and legal interpretation. Negatively, it criticizes views of legal and literary interpretation that attempt to derive their features from an account of interpretation-in-general. The thesis that a successful interpretation always recovers an author’s intention is specifically rejected. A “naïve” view of interpretation is defended—the one that appears when we are sunk in practical activity—as opposed to theories of interpretation (e.g., “postmodern” ones) that tend to picture it as ubiquitous and endless.Less

Finnegans Wake and the Cultural Economy of Typography: “Its Face Is Its Fortune”

Tekla Mecsnóber

in Rewriting Joyce's Europe: The Politics of Language and Visual Design

In chapter 5, Mecsnóber investigates the typographical “face” which fragments of James Joyce’s “Work in Progress,” the later Finnegans Wake, presented to the public as they were published in ... More

In chapter 5, Mecsnóber investigates the typographical “face” which fragments of James Joyce’s “Work in Progress,” the later Finnegans Wake, presented to the public as they were published in periodicals (including modernist little magazines), deluxe limited editions, and cheaper trade editions between 1924 and 1939. Stressing Joyce’s efforts to assert his authorial intentions also through engagement with design issues, Mecsnóber investigates the textual materiality of Joyce’s texts through relying on contemporary assessments of the typefaces involved. It highlights Joyce’s interpretive interventions, traces the increasing use of historicist typefaces and fine printing conventions, exposes the emphatic distinction of the later fine press editions, and uncovers the impact that the publication of Ulysses had on the graphic presentation of Joyce’s last major work through mobilizing the symbolic capital associated with the previous text.Less

Conclusion: “Loitering in the Past” with Joyce

Tekla Mecsnóber

in Rewriting Joyce's Europe: The Politics of Language and Visual Design

In addition to reviewing the most important results of the analyses presented in the previous chapters, in the conclusion Mecsnóber offers three more general points about historicist interpretations ... More

In addition to reviewing the most important results of the analyses presented in the previous chapters, in the conclusion Mecsnóber offers three more general points about historicist interpretations of Joyce. Firstly, Mecsnóber sketches some concrete difficulties of using authorial intention as a touchstone and asserts the value of readings that try to identify what Stephen Dedalus calls “chiming” in Ulysses and what Stephen Greenblatt calls resonance—that is, significant intersections between linguistic and visual features of Joyce’s texts and their historical contexts. Secondly, Mecsnóber warns that mapping modernism digitally is far from being a simple and straightforward affair: given the prevalence of dislocation in the age, digital analyses and visualizations which cannot handle multiple national allegiances or project modernist literary production on twenty-first-century maps of Europe run the risk of endangering the validity of their arguments. Finally, Mecsnóber reasserts that “loitering in the past” with Joyce prompts the recognition not only of the radical alterity of the past but also of current political stakes involved in the issues that Joyce flagged in his works—issues related to the propensity of both artistic and political communication to explore and exploit all available resources of language, verbal and visual alike.Less

Literary Style

Patrick Colm Hogan

in Style in Narrative: Aspects of an Affective-Cognitive Stylistics

Style has often been understood both too broadly and too narrowly. In consequence, it has not defined a psychologically coherent area of study. In this chapter, Hogan first defines style so as to ... More

Style has often been understood both too broadly and too narrowly. In consequence, it has not defined a psychologically coherent area of study. In this chapter, Hogan first defines style so as to make possible a consistent and systematic theoretical account of the topic in relation to cognitive and affective science. This definition stresses that style varies by both scope and level—thus, the range of text or texts that may share a style (from a single passage to a historical period) and the components of a work that might involve a shared style (including story, narration, and verbalization). This chapter also addresses a second question—what purposes are served by style? There are three key functions of style: 1) the shaping of story understanding, 2) the communication of thematic concerns (i.e., concerns that extend beyond the work to values in the world), and 3) the arousal and modulation of emotion. Hogan illustrates the main points of this chapter by reference to literary works, prominently Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway.Less

Notes from the House of the Dead: Ridiculous Jew, Existential Christian, Hagiographic Muslim, and the Intentional Text

in The Ridiculous Jew: The Exploitation and Transformation of a Stereotype in Gogol, Turgenev, and Dostoevsky

In its representation of the Jew, Notes from the House of the Dead looks backward to an older tradition, showing a good deal more in common with Gogol's Yankel than with the literary Jew of the ... More

In its representation of the Jew, Notes from the House of the Dead looks backward to an older tradition, showing a good deal more in common with Gogol's Yankel than with the literary Jew of the second half of the nineteenth century. The comic Jew that Dostoevsky needed in the novel was there for the taking in the works of his literary predecessors. Dostoevsky's readers have been disconcerted by the fact that the portrait of Isay Fomich is so firmly grounded in old stereotypes and that it does not incorporate the more problematic traits characteristic even in Dostoevsky's early fiction—a view that has led some readers to problematize Isay Fomich, finding in him redeeming traits or even existential agendas that go beyond the ostensible intentions of the author. This chapter explores the openings in the novel that support a deconstructive interpretation: that is, an interpretation that, set against authorial intention (the rhetoric of the novel), might lead to a more problematic—and perhaps more interesting—understanding of not only Isay Fomich but the narrator-hero as well.Less

Ulysses and the Transformation of Typography: The Ineluctable Modernity of the Visible

Tekla Mecsnóber

in Rewriting Joyce's Europe: The Politics of Language and Visual Design

Mecsnóber begins chapter 4 by tracing Joyce’s textual attention to visual aspects of printing in Ulysses and places it into the context of the writer’s increased involvement with the production of ... More

Mecsnóber begins chapter 4 by tracing Joyce’s textual attention to visual aspects of printing in Ulysses and places it into the context of the writer’s increased involvement with the production of the first, 1922 edition of the novel. Sharing an interest in textual materiality with much recent critical work, Mecsnóber focuses on one salient visual aspect of Genette’s paratexts and McGann’s bibliographic codes: typeface choice. Mecsnóber identifies a range of typographic functions and highlights Joyce’s insistence on asserting his authorial intentions through interpretive design. Reviewing the design of all significant periodical and book publications of the novel during Joyce’s life as well as some related publicity materials, Mecsnóber also seeks to recover the cultural significance of other visual clues as well, employed to attribute selected qualities to Joyce’s text or to the “little” magazines in which they appeared. Read in the broader context of the typographic transformations of the late-nineteenth and early twentieth-century print culture, the design of Ulysses editions shows the enabling impact of the historicist fine printing movement arising out of William Morris’s Arts and Crafts Movement, progressive design movements like New Typography, and the surge in the production and international exchange of typographic resources.Less

Ambiguity

Martin Camper

in Arguing over Texts: The Rhetoric of Interpretation

Chapter 2 examines disputes over ambiguity, in which interpreters argue over a single linguistic form that evokes distinct alternative meanings. The chapter classifies three types of ambiguity ... More

Chapter 2 examines disputes over ambiguity, in which interpreters argue over a single linguistic form that evokes distinct alternative meanings. The chapter classifies three types of ambiguity according to contemporary linguistic theory, details common lines of argument for supporting interpretations of ambiguities, and explains the differences between interpreting an ambiguity as unintentional versus intentional. The chapter offers an extended rhetorical analysis of the controversy surrounding Phillis Wheatley’s 1768 poem “On Being Brought from Africa to America,” which has been criticized as an expression of racial self-hatred. Literary critics in defense of Wheatley have argued the poem contains intentional ambiguities that covertly express Wheatley’s anti-racist and slavery views. This case illustrates that arguers can claim a text contains a coded message by uncovering additional meanings through its ambiguities. The various examples in the chapter highlight the important role ambiguity plays in shifting our interpretations of texts and their authors.Less

‘Our Literary History in the Making’: The Persistence of the Literary Press, 1969–2000

Siobhán Holland

in The Oxford History of the Irish Book, Volume V: The Irish Book in English, 1891-2000

This chapter examines the state of publishing in Ireland between 1969 and 2000, with particular emphasis on the literary press. It considers how profits obtained from ‘original, creative’ work by ... More

This chapter examines the state of publishing in Ireland between 1969 and 2000, with particular emphasis on the literary press. It considers how profits obtained from ‘original, creative’ work by writers ‘solely resident in Ireland’ became exempt from income tax in 1969, followed by a discussion on the impact of the 1972 value-added tax on publishers. It also explores some of the shifting cultural and financial contexts in which the Irish book industry existed in the late twentieth century. More specifically, it looks at some of the infrastructural factors that have affected Irish publishing, the attempts by Irish authors and publishers to retain autonomy over the processes of literary and textual production, and the gravitational pull of publishing in London. Finally, the chapter analyses the influence of Irish books on authorial intention and reading.Less

Filling the Gaps

Lilah Grace Canevaro

in Hesiod’s Works and Days: How to Teach Self-Sufficiency

Chapter 5 contextualizes the discussion, asking: is the Works and Days unique? This chapter argues that the Works and Days has two main selling points: the remarkable balance between modes of ... More

Chapter 5 contextualizes the discussion, asking: is the Works and Days unique? This chapter argues that the Works and Days has two main selling points: the remarkable balance between modes of reading, and the link between the demands Hesiod places on his audience and his particular Iron Age preoccupations. Moreover, this chapter puts together these two issues, showing how the two modes of reading, through the gaps they leave, challenge the Iron Age audience to aspire to intellectual self-sufficiency. Chapter 2 shows how Hesiod moulds structure to fit content; Chapter 5 adds that Hesiod uses structure also to fit didactic purpose. The very modes of reading the Works and Days function as another of Hesiod's didactic methods. However, this chapter also uses the work of scholars on the Catalogue of Women, Thucydides, Herodotus, Aristotle, and the Vita Aesopi to provide comparanda for Hesiod's Works and Days and this book's discussion of it.Less