There’s No Such Thing as Interpreting a Text

There’s No Such Thing as Interpreting a Text

Description

Positively, this chapter sets out various structural differences between literary and legal interpretation. Negatively, it criticizes views of legal and literary interpretation that attempt to derive their features from an account of interpretation-in-general. The thesis that a successful interpretation always recovers an author’s intention is specifically rejected. A “naïve” view of interpretation is defended—the one that appears when we are sunk in practical activity—as opposed to theories of interpretation (e.g., “postmodern” ones) that tend to picture it as ubiquitous and endless.

ISBN

9780190456368

Editor(s)

Elizabeth S. Anker & Bernadette Meyler

Start Page

69

Publication Date

6-2017

Publisher

Oxford University Press

Keywords

law and literature, interpretation, indeterminacy, authorial intention, intentionalism, pluralism, Wittgenstein, Paul de Man

Disciplines

Arts and Humanities | Intellectual Property Law | Law | Law and Politics | Law and Society

There’s No Such Thing as Interpreting a Text

Share

COinS