How can we interpret/read a

doc?

Two major ways of interpreting

Performative Interpretation

Scholarly Interpretation

The essay mainly deals with scholarly interpretation.

Performative Interpretation

Any kind of performance is an interpretation

Recitation - oldest kind of performance

Translation – there can be 2 types of translation

Translation from one language to another (linguistic trans.)

Translation from one medium to another

A good translation will resemble an original work

Pastiches, hoaxes and parodies are also interpretations

Parody, hoax etc are ways of „playing‟ with a work. Ie, they contain „ludic‟ elements.

They raise the self consciousness and create critical awareness.

Performative interpretation is not inferior to Scholarly interpretion

Parodies, hoaxes etc are a result of close study

You cannot parody something which you have not studied closely.

Scholarly Interpretation

Attempts to access the truth/meaning of a work

A work can contain multiple versions of

truth/meaning

Multiple scholarly interpretations are possible

Therefore, there are no authoritative/final

scholarly interpretations of a work.

Scholarship is a product of history.

Scholarship changes/affects/alters the work under

consideration.

Scholarship is a process.

Features of Modern Scholarly

Inter.

20th C interpretation is associated with

institutions or “interpretive communities”

The Church, the University, the Court etc

There are „subcommunities‟ within these

Institutions are governed by „ideologies‟

A proliferation of interpretational activity

New

Criticism, Hermeneutics, Feminism, Psychoanalyti

c Criticism, Marxist

Criticism, Narratology, Historicism etc

Is there anything common between them?

They are shaped by the sociohistorical

environment.

All scholarly interpretation starts from

Materials

Means of textual production

Modes

Interpretation weaves together

History of the work‟s production

History of the work‟s reception

An exception: interpretation focused on

technical issues

Studies of metrical, prosodic characteristics

Analytic/Descriptive bibliography

Interpretation is a negotiation between

Procedural rigour ie, interpretational techniques

Critical reflection ie, the need to

judge/evaluate/comment upon a work.

A model for interpretation

Double Helix – like DNA

Production History Reception

History

A model for interpretation

Interpretation must focus on Three Categories

A. The Originary

Discursive Moment

1. Author

2. Others invested in

cultural prodn

3. Institutional

frameworks of cultural

prodn

4. Material/Cultural

influences which shape

the above

5. The specific features of

the time of prodn –

temporal phases

B. Secondary Moments

of Discursive

Prodn/Reprodn

• Influences which

reshape and

reconstruct

interpretation

• Discursive fields –

autopoietic systems

• These are the

various kinds of

interpretation that

are available.

Eg, various kinds of

theories

Feminism, Psychoan

alysis etc

C. The immediate

moment of

Interpretation

• Requires an

analysis of the

interpreter‟s critical

purposes.

• A critical reflection

on the act of

interpretation

Interpretation by Indirection

Deformance

Galvano Della Volpe – a theoryof how

interpretation works.

Imaginative literature is a type of discourse whose

rationality consists in its exploitation of the

polysemous dimension of language.

Interpretation also involves a creative use of

language

Interpretation is an application of scientia

(logic/scientific method) to understand poiesis.

Interpretation is a creative process in which

one type of discourse (scientia) is used to

understand another (poiesis).

A form of dialectics: “a dialectic of expressive

facts” in which “neither of the elements of the

relation can be reduced absolutely to the

other…for…they…circulate only relatively

within each other, in the diversified unity of an

historical movement”

A gap between the work and its interpretation

– a quid.

Interpretation is a collection of paraphrases