NOTE: We'll take a break from reading Beowulf for a day to delve into more matters of theory, interpretation, and meaning! This chapter may seem a bit dense, but read slowly and use the questions below as a guide if you get lost. I promise, there are some fascinating and very useful ideas hidden in here, especially for those future teachers among you!
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 an author’s intention used to matter so much, whereas now, we tend to regard it with skepticism? Similarly, how does this free us up to discuss the works of living writers, and writers we know too much about, in particular?
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? (and how might we do this for Beowulf)?
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)?
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