Reader-response criticism and hermeneutics

Reader-response criticism approaches to biblical literature in terms of the values, attitudes, and response of readers. The reader, therefore, plays a role in the „production" or „creation" of meaning and significance. This role of the reader relativizes the conventional view that the text...

Teljes leírás

Elmentve itt :
Bibliográfiai részletek
Szerző: McKnight Edgar V.
Dokumentumtípus: Könyv része
Megjelent: 1992
Sorozat:Acta Universitatis Szegediensis de Attila József nominatae : papers in english and american studies 4
Papers in English and American studies : Tomus IV. - Literary theory and biblical hermeneutics : proceedings of the International Conference: "Reading Scripture - Literary Criticism and Biblical Hermeneutics", Pannonhalma, 4-6 July, 1991 4
Kulcsszavak:Hermeneutika - bibliai, Újszövetség - bibliakritika, Bibliamagyarázat
Tárgyszavak:
Online Access:http://acta.bibl.u-szeged.hu/68653
Leíró adatok
Tartalmi kivonat:Reader-response criticism approaches to biblical literature in terms of the values, attitudes, and response of readers. The reader, therefore, plays a role in the „production" or „creation" of meaning and significance. This role of the reader relativizes the conventional view that the text is an achieved structure of meaning. Radical reader-response approaches also challenge conventional views concerning the autonomous critic and the scientific objective process of reading and criticism. Insights and strategies of reader-response criticism valuable for New Testament hermeneutics are in danger of being neglected today because of radical deconstructive moves and because of a reactionary suspicion of and retreat from non-conventional approaches in light of the perceived threat of deconstruction. The question of language is at the center of the different varieties of reader response criticism. Three positions may be observed in the work of Stanley Fish and Wolfgang Iser: (1) the early Fish emphasized the temporal dimension of reading rather than the spatial form of the text as the essential factor in meaning, but he also maintained the integrity of language and the text with the result that „ informed readers" come to basically the same evaluation of literary texts; (2) Iser advocated a phenomenological approach which maintains the integrity of poetic consciousness and intention with the result that readers' intentions are determined by the text and are in continuity with the intention of the author; and (3) the later Fish seems to question all that the New Critics and the phenomenologists assumed concerning such matters as the nature of reality, the autonomy of the self, the . stability of literary texts, and the independence of fact and meaning from value and interpretation. Can room be made for the substantial contribution of actual readers in the actualization of biblical texts (contributions in which the different national and faith communities of readers make a difference, for example) without denying the integrity of language. The pioneering work of early East European Formalists will be explicated as providing ways of conceiving of language and the language of literature so as to maintain the integrity of language and to take account of culture and individual valuation. How can the insights and strategies of the deconstruction of Jaques Derrida be incorporated? One way woul be to interpret Derrida as intending what East European Formalists discovered, the fact that discourse is not simply governed from without by some nondiscoursive atemporal ground. Discourse is always governed in part by rules which are subject to historical transformations. Truth and rationality are always constrained within historical determinations. Knowledge, language, meaning, and interpretation, however, are set by Derrida not just within a dynamic cultural context but at the same time within a context of power and authority. Deconstruction, then, is concerned with the examination of the desire for mastery — the mastery of knowledge through language and meaning theough interpretation — and the subversion of that desire through the very nature of the language itself. . How can a reader enter into the world of the text on the condition set up by the text and construct a unified piece out of the structures offered by the text and yet give conscious attention to the impulse toward and result of the synthesizing and saturating in order to break its „domination"? . The paper examines the values and challenges of reader-response insights and strategies for New testament hermeneutics and illustrates the approach with a reading of Luke 5:1-11.
Terjedelem/Fizikai jellemzők:57-70
ISSN:0230-2780