Literary Theory Today

Hermeneutics and the Novel

HERMENEUTICS AND THE NOVEL E1inor Shaffer Modern hermeneutìcs has shown itself to be one of the most ferti1e and effective sources of literary theory and analysis. Its ori早ins ln the interpretation of the Biblical text and canon keep it firmly rooted in the central scriptures of Western society, while philosophìcal hermeneutics since its inception in the eighteenth century has had a pecu1iarly intlmate yet challenging relation to historicaJ understanding. Indeed, it is in the interplay of the notions of the immutable inspired Word and the necessary historical conditions of its human production that phi1osophìcal hermeneutìcs found its form. With the freeing of exegesis from dogma (in Dilthey's phrase), Biblical hermeneutìcs was gradually transformed into a general h~rmeneutìcs ， avai1able for the understanding of ãu texts.1 As the dlfference between the interpretãtion of sacred and profane texts vanished, hermeneutics, as a mode of scrutiny of historìcal sources, not only assumed a propaedeutic function in reJation to the study of history, but came to s認L'd at the centre of historical understanding itse1f. If hermeneutics sti11 attempted to set up prínciples of interpretation that would be valid regardJess of the time in which the text was written and regardJess of the time in which the interpretation was made, yet the act of historical reconstruction of the time and the mi1ieu in which the author of the text had worked became the focal point of the act of imagination itself. The formulation of general hermeneutìcs by Schleiermacher was so c10sely 1inked with romantic aesthetics as to render the relation between the essential creative function and the reconstruction of historìcal rea1ity throu在h the author's subjectivity an ìnescapable problematìc for modern phiJosophical hermeneutics as well. The experìence of reconstruction 'Was given its modern significance by Wi1helm Dilthey, whose concern with the method of the Geisteswissenschafter~， as opposed .to that of the natural sciences, led him to view Schleiermacher's general hermeneutìcs as a mode of thou在 ht potentially 泛ppropriate 223 to all the human sciences. The lìnk with romantic aesthetics gave hermeneutics a powerful role in the development of a distinctively romantic programme of literary history and genre theory as it affected the practice of writing itse1f.τhe development of phenomenological hermeneutics by Heidegger, and modern attempts to understand Hterary criticism in relation to the human sciences have made hermeneutics again productive of fresh readings. In recent philosophical hermeneutics, especially in the work of Hans-Georg Gadamer, followin皂 N ietzsche and Heìdegger, the act of creative historicaJ reconstruction, a process which both "places" the text and est我blishes the interpreter's reJatìon to his own modernity, remaìns an imperatìve which despite 1ts own inherent dìfficulties has come to play an important role in the stru能le of modern aesthetics and 1iterary critìcism to 皂et "beyond forma1ism." The phi1osophical task, in this framework, is nQLt9_~_xplica!e theeternal beauty of the autonomot,Js wor_k Qt 懿勻， but t9 darify the conditions of the process by which art CQmes_to… be u哩ler~Jo_od __a.nd interpreted. A properly hermeneutic consCÌousness (in Gadamer's terms, the "wirkung峙的呼ichtliches Bewusstsein呼叫11 be aware of the constitutive force of the successive encounters with the text within history.2 The l1ermeneutic consciousness in reflectìng on the historical character of art b金çomes exquisitely and painfully aware of its own hi 試Qridty; yet the cont1nuity of historicaJ encounters with the text, that is, tradition, ls thought to provide a kind of safegu訟rd of validity. It is frequently stated that there are two main schools in contemporary hermeneutics, the d1fference between them turning on their attitudes towar_ds the much discussed question of -the "author's intention.,,3 Gadamer has taken the position that the reconstructed intention of the author represents a "iusion of horizons," in which the interpreter's own hìstorical position is necessarily represented in the terms in which he puts his attempt, however searchin巷， howver minutely informed, however sincere, to recover the author's intention. A c1ear i1lustration of this problem as it 22年 affects traditional 1iterary criticism ìs offered in Helen Gard附內 chapter on "The Historical App防部h" in T世 Business of Criticis侃， in which she shows that the attempt to explore Shakespeare's intention through the investigation of the E1izabethan audience's likely range of response to...