For Friday: Culler, Literary Theory, Chapter 4: "Language, Meaning, and Interpretation"

"This Is Not a Pipe" (Rene Magritte)

As promised, we're back to Culler after a brief foray into Sappho's poetry! But don't worry, we'll be moving onto Shakespeare's Sonnets before long. Don't forget that I moved the Paper #1 assignment back to Wednesday (after Labor Day), so you have time to keep thinking about it. This chapter might give you more ideas when it comes to interpreting poems, discovering meaning, and using words to uncover theories. 

Answer TWO of the following: 

Q1: If ‘poetics’ is about the meaning of texts and how these meanings are achieved, then what is ‘hermenutics’? Why might this be equally important in reading or discussing a text? When might hermeneutics also get in the way?

Q2: 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? Similarly, how does this free us up to discuss Sappho in a way we normally couldn’t?

Q3: On page 63, Culler writes that “a work is interpreted as answering questions posed by [the] horizon of expectations, and a reader of the 1990s approaches Hamlet with expectations different from those of a contemporary of Shakespeare’s.” So if Shakespeare was writing to his audience and their expectations, how does it make reading his works especially difficult? How can a modern reader be aware of a previous age’s—and even their own—horizon of expectations?

Q4: 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? Does this relate to the idea that “meaning is context-bound, but context is boundless” (67)?