Biblical Interpretation: An Integrated Approach by W. Randolph Tate

Author:W. Randolph Tate [Tate, W. Randolph]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, pdf
ISBN: 9781441237101
Publisher: Baker Publishing Group
Published: 2008-05-01T04:00:00+00:00

Summary

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In developing his theory of the reader’s role in relation to the text’s encyclopedia, Eco focuses on what he calls the “model reader.” The fact is, however, none of us are model readers. Moreover, no two readers are identical; neither are we ever individually the same reader twice. While some readers may share common areas of agreement, each reader has an individual imagination and as such fills out a text in individualistic ways. To compound this sense of subjectivity, literary texts are self-referential. Given this self-referential quality of literary (what we have already referred to as mimetic) texts, the reader is invited, indeed, required to become intimately involved in creating the literary work. This is a requirement because the literary work (the aesthetic object) comes into being only through the imaginative interaction between the text (the artistic object) and the reader. Some readers, however, are more informed and therefore more competent than others; i.e., some readers are more cognizant of the restraints placed upon the process of reading by the linguistic, figurative, and ideological structures of the text. Authors of truly mimetic texts know their trade well. They know that competent readers read in particular ways, and therefore structure their presentation in ways that either validate the poetics of reading or frustrate them. They can impose one intertextual frame of reference upon another one, demanding that the reader make the connection; they can withhold information at strategic places in the plot; they can provide information in order to foreshadow some other event further along in the story; they can deliberately decontextualize a literary device.

Perhaps we have reached something close to a balance here. It may be a disturbing balance, however, to those who tend to demand something of literary texts and language that is simply unachievable—complete objectivity. Literary texts as specific instances of parole have an inherent polyvalence because the systems (langue) from which they originate are polyvalent. The best which we may claim for such texts is that they establish parameters which may constitute one interpretation more or less legitimate than another. Not all interpretations are equally plausible, just as not all readers are equally skilled. While we assert that readers confront texts with a given repertoire, we may also claim that these same readers should be cognizant of the text’s repertoire. If a reader ignores the text’s repertoire, an aesthetic object will be actualized, but it will be an inferior one.

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