Herrnstein Smith (147)
[OED. Contingency: 7. A thing incident to something else; an uncertain incident; an incidental expense, etc. Contingent: 4. Happening or coming by chance; not fixed by necessity or fate; accidental, fortuitous. 8. Dependent for its occurrence or character on or upon some prior occurrence or condition.]
Survival of work of literature neither institutional nor due to timeless values,
but interactions of contingent circumstances (147-8)
Author adjusts fitness of work; audience interacts with work's properties; cultural
similarity behind similarity of responses (148)
[no commonality of response deriving from text]
Exemplary work: may (1) fade, or (2) survive even if not for values it first
had (148-9)
[Estimating values for previous generations: review
critical history of a text; how far do values survive?]
Canonical work: disvalued features will be backgrounded, formal features emphasized
(149)
[is disvaluing typical? E.g., Merchant of Venice]
Canonical work will function canonically, as a reservoir of values, as a touchstone,
etc. (149-50)
[endurance itself fosters endurance: is this argument
tautological? OED, tautology: d. Applied to the repetition of a statement as
its own reason, or to the identification of cause and effect.]
But not unmediated: response is determined by cultural institutions (150)
[contrast readers studied by Rose]
Cultural institutions and culturally dominant people who determine what works
count (150)
[and/or regime of bookshops, continual sale for
the canonical?]
Such works are information rich, appeal to various subjects (151)
[how far does this define a canonical text - its
indeterminacies, questions, etc.?]
Canonical works reinforce establishment ideologies; would not survive if they
radically undercut such ideology (151)
[consider survival of Wordsworth's Lyrical Ballads,
Shelley's Prometheus Unbound, etc.]
Although the dominant class do not wholly determine the canonical (151)
The values assigned to a literary work are responsible for reproducing its value
(151)
[tautology again? What are the grounds for value,
if value is always imposed extrinsically?]
That for non-academic, non-Western educated people our canon (Homer, etc.) has
no value for them (152)
[does no non-academic reader read canonical texts?]
Fish (268)
Interpretive communities responsible for shaping reader's response and text
(268)
[How do you recognize an interpretive community when you see one?]
Fish's students told to interpret poem on blackboard (269)
[Is this anecdote about poetry or about professorial power?]
Distinguishing features supposed to identify a poem; but knowing it is a poem
comes first, poetic qualities then emerge (270)
[This supposes that bottom-up perception (e.g., the visual system) is not possible]
Given a definition of poetry as complex you will look for complexities; interpretation
then produces the poem (271)
[Reverse Fish's anecdote: suppose I am told a (poetic) text is not a poem?]
Compared to doing an assignment: also contexualized, hence understood a priori
(272-3)
[seems to define all academic activity as entirely convention-driven]
Both a poem and an assignment are constructed artifacts, nothing innate (273)
No natural objects, including lists, letters, or paper (274)
[seems to overlook gestalt and other principles of perception, etc.]
Meaning is social and conventional (274)
We are embedded in institutions that determine our access to meaning (274)
[are there any meanings not determined by institutions? (may be inflected by
institutions, e.g., mourning)]
That specific meanings become available, inevitable, within institutional settings
(274)
[can we disagree on meaning within an institution?]
How to understand words: again, conventional (275)
[baby and mommy: note syntactic relations, knowledge of the world; "it" is anaphoric]
We confer significance by seeing, not afterwards (276)
Self does not exist outside norms and conventions (276)
Selves are constituted by social organizations just as texts are (277)
We will always find agreement between interpreters of a text (277)
[again, can we disagree on meaning within an institution?]
Dasenbrock (278)
View that interpretive framework determines the poem; conceptual relativism
(278-9)
Belief systems (like theories) determine interpretation; each is in a different
world (280)
Conceptual relativism: Fish's compared to Kuhn's, critique of Davidson (281)
Conceptual schemes can't be coherent (281)
Conceptual scheme theory suggests past meanings are not recoverable (282)
But words can be used differently, hence other meanings can be translated (282)
In literary interpretation, the only way we can recognize difference is by translating
between differing interpretations; hence radical otherness is not possible (283)
We interpret according to our beliefs; but this gets us to provisional agreement
with a text, passing disagreements may follow; modifying of belief may follow
(285)
We can shift beliefs to accommodate the anomalous (even a Fish can change) (285)
Interpretations are not always necessary or self-confirming, as in Fish's model
(286)
Purpose of literary study is in question, if it is only to perfect given interpretations
(286)
Interpretation as based on provisional belief, willingness to adjust to anomalies
(288)
That we need a hermeneutics of what differs from us (288)
Conclusions: for Institution
Where do values come from that determine texts fostered by the literary institution?
(cf. Smith on questioning secular values, etc., p. 151)
How variable is the canon of literature over the last several centuries?
Do we know whether Shakespeare (say) was valued in a radically different way
in previous centuries?
What is the source of literary value if not the texts in themselves?
What control do literary institutions really have over reading and its purposes?
How do we recognize the anomalous, the new, if interpretation is decided always
already?
Incompleteness of conceptual schemas suggests scope for change, learning
Why would theorists wish to believe that literary value is secondary to, or
contingent on institutions?
Document created February 17th 2005