We'll return to Culler's text for Monday's reading, which is Chapter 4: "Language, Meaning, and Interpretation." This shares many ideas with Chapter 5, which we read before Sappho, and challenges how we think about terms like meaning, purpose, intent, and interpretation. We'll have another in-class response on Monday based on some key ideas from this chapter. Here are some ideas to consider as you read:
* What does he mean by the statement, "Meaning is context-bound, but contest is boundless?"
* Make sure you understand the admittedly tricky difference between poetics and hermenutics. Which one do we tend to favor in modern literature classes and why? How would you interpret a work differently if you focused primarily on matters of poetics?
* What is the "Intentional Fallacy," and why is it a "fallacy"? Why do you think intention used to matter for so much, and now, we tend to question it rather than accept it at face value?
* What is "reader response theory," and how does it relate to the interpretation of a literary work?
* Related to the above, are readers more important than authors in interpreting a literary work? Why or why not?
* If interpretation can often be boiled down to theories that carry their own assumptions and perspectives (such as feminism, Marxism, historicism, etc.) then how can they be used to interpret anything? Isn't the interpretation obvious from the approach?
* What is the "horizon of expectations"? How does this particularly relate to Sappho's poetry?
* What is the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis? How might this specifically relate to the study of literature?
* What does it mean to say that language is more about difference than meaning?
* Finally, what does it mean that a word's form and meaning have an arbitrary relationship? How can a dog not be a dog? Or a moon not be a moon?
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