Perhaps I should have begun with a brief explanation of what I take to be the general kind of theory popular today of how literature gains its meaning. I was educated after the Chicago school, meaning the authors in my wheel-house are (Jacques Derrida and Roland Barthes), Wayne C. Booth, James Phelan, Peter J. Rabinowitz, Stanley Fish, Lisa Zunshine... consequently, when I read I am highly conscious of who is talking to me (implied author, narrator, characters narrated, etc.) through the levels of story (which I'll frequently refer to by alteration of prefixes before the word "diegesis", which I learned from Gérard Genette). It also means that I believe meaning in literature is determined by the signs provided by the author and the context in which those signs are interpreted by the reader. Context is usually the problematic factor, in my mind, as it includes innumerable variables, from the whole of that reader's literary experience to the physical presentation of the literary work itself.
This means that there is no "correct" interpretation of a work (who would award the title? According to this theory of criticism, the work is out of he author's hands as soon as it's written, though that doesn't necessarily excuse the author from his/her responsibility as a writer.) In the absense of a right/wrong dichotomy, it's useful to have a system of determining "good" readings from "bad" ones.
On the level of the word or the phrase, the articulation of this system I've liked best is Fish's "Normal Circumstances," which attempts to put book-ends around what signification it's reasonable to draw from a given set of signs; it's a way to help us agree on meanings though an actual audience's contexts can never be identical.
The best reading of a literary work seems to be the one which best accounts for the whole of the work. But in what context? The implied context, or the actual one? Is it the context as the author assumed the work would be read, so, in Shakespeare's case, the context of the Globe theatre-goers, or is it the context of whom-so-ever picks up the volume, regardless of the author's intent? I don't know that I've ever seen a satisfying answer to this question (though I'm sure convincing ones must exist), or, if I have, I've forgotten it. If anyone can suggest any solutions or reading material, I'm open to creating a dialogue...
Anyway, that's a (very) cursory account of my background, which I'm hoping will explain some of the assumptions I make without realizing I've made them.
Hospital Office, TN - 23 March 2013
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