The Range of Interpretation

by Wolfgang Iser

Overview

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.

For Iser, there are several different genres of interpretation, all of which are acts of translation designed to transpose something into something else. Perhaps the most obvious example of interpretation involves canonical texts, such as the Rabbinical exegesis of the Torah or Samuel Johnson's reading of Shakespeare. But what happens when the matter that one seeks to interpret consists not of a text but of a welter of fragments, as in the study of history, or when something is hidden, as in the practice of psychoanalysis, or is as complex as a culture or system? Iser details how, in each of these cases, the space that is opened up by interpretation is negotiated in a different way, thus concluding that interpretation always depends on what it seeks to translate.

For students of philosophy, literary and critical theory, anthropology, and cultural history, Iser's elucidation of the mechanics by which we translate and understand, as well as his assessment of the anthropological roots of our drive to make meaning, will undoubtedly serve as a revelation.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780231119030
Publisher:	Columbia University Press
Publication date:	09/18/2001
Series:	The Wellek Library Lectures
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	280
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.60(d)
Lexile:	1450L (what's this?)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Wolfgang Iser is professor of comparative literature at the University of Konstanz, Germany, and professor of English at the University of California, Irvine. He is best known for his works The Implied Reader: Patterns of Communication in Prose Fiction from Bunyan to Beckett; The Act of Reading: A Theory of Aesthetic Response; Prospecting: From Reader Response to Literary Anthropology; and The Fictive and the Imaginary: Charting Literary Anthropology.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction
The Marketplace of Interpretation
Interpretation as Translatability
2. The Authority of the Canon
Canonization and Midrash
The Literary Canon: Dr. Johnson on Shakespeare
3. The Hermeneutic Circle
Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher: Self-reflective Circularity
Johann Gustav Droysen: The Nesting of Circles
Paul Ricoeur: Transactional Loops
4. The Recursive Loop
Recursion in Ethnographic Discourse
Systemic Recursion
5. The Traveling Differential: Franz Rosenzweig, "The Star of Redemption"
"The Birth of the Elements Out of the Somber Foundations of Nought''
Proliferating Translatability
6. Configurations of Interpretation: An Epilogue

What People are Saying About This

Gabriele Schwab

Iser's assessment of literature's cultural function makes a challenging contribution to the anthropological turn in literary studies and the interdisciplinary debates about literature and anthropology.

— Gabriele Schwab, University of California, Irvine

Mihai I. Spariosu

Iser's insightful and erudite book is a truly original contribution to the field, for a cultural-historical and anthropological exploration of the Western practices of interpretation has long been overdue.

— Mihai I. Spariosu, University of Georgia

Editorial Reviews

[Range of Interpretation] leaves the reader with a greatly expanded understanding of the nature of interpretation, of the various roles it assumes in our culture, and it is difficult to imagine a scholar who would not profit from such a book.

Philosophy in Review

Iser´s insightful and erudite book is a truly original contribution to the field, for a cultural-historical and anthropological exploration of the Western practices of interpretation has long been overdue.

Mihai I. Spariosu

Iser´s assessment of literature´s cultural function makes a challenging contribution to the anthropological turn in literary studies and the interdisciplinary debates about literature and anthropology.

Gabriele Schwab