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Been reading Peter Middleton’s Distant Reading: Performance, Readership, and Consumption in Contemporary Poetry (U of Alabama P, 2005). Smart guy; I’m not so compelled by his account of the phenemenon of the poetry reading – where’s an analysis of the sheer socialized boredom of the thing? – but I’m taken with his opening chapter on “proleptic” reading. The classic literary critic, he explains, is like Jesus in the Gospel According to Luke, who reads from the prophet Isaiah in the synagogue at Nazareth, then explains that the prophecy has been fulfilled in his own person. In other words (Susan Noake’s, to be precise), Jesus “affirms in the present that he is the future to which the (past) text looked forward,” while the other (assumedly more Talmudic) reader “looks to the (past) text in hopes of understanding it at some moment in the future.” Middleton:
The contrast between these two types of reading illuminates the limitations of most contemporary interpretations of literary modes, because the standard model of literary interpretation similarly assumes that it can transcend the distance between itself and the inception of the text in a fulfillment of the meaning of the text. The other type of reading represented in Luke’s narrative (by the ordinary disputants) corresponds to what I shall call “distant reading,” an interpretation that acknowledges that it is only one moment of the text’s future, and only one of many “interpretants”…
5 comments:
I don't think it's quite accurate to say that a Talmudic reading “looks to the (past) text in hopes of understanding it at some moment in the future.” Middleton, I guess, would be closer to a Talmudic view with "an interpretation that acknowledges that it is only one moment of the text’s future, and only one of many “interpretants”…" The point is that there can be no single interpretation; the text includes and anticipates all its readings. From the Jewish viewpoint, Christ's presentation of himself in the Gospels as the completion of the word in the flesh shuts down the endless dialogue (or play) of interpretation. See Handelman's Slayers of Moses. What this has to do with interpreting secular literature remains, in itself, an endless debate...
One of the interesting aspects of this debate, however, is that Jesus oftenr efers to himself (in the Gospels, anyway) in the 3rd person. Thus his claim to be the fulfillment of Scripture could be intended to be understood, in some sense, "generically". Ie. the "Son of Man" (not Jesus "personally", as a particular individual) is the fulfillment of Scripture. So Jesus would be presenting a sort of theory of hermeneutics, or method of interpretation.
This is admittedly not a very orthodox interpretation.
I've pondered this issue a lot, at various times, on my blog, in terms of locating a difference between poetry & other kinds of writing. Poetry seems to me to emphasize the "presentational", the "nowness", the "impersonation", the "embodiment", of language.
Wouldn’t you say, Henry, that you’re still proposing an “incarnational” view of poetic language? And if you don’t want to go as far back as the Gospels, how about Heidegger and his idea of poetry as unveiling Being through language, etc.? That in turn would lead us to the deconstructive critique of H., which bears a strong family resemblance to the Talmudic view. Plus ca change, plus la meme chose.
Norman, I tried reading "Poetry, Being & Thought" (have I got that right?) when I was about 18, and was completely turned off. Hence my ignorance of Heidegger. That book seemed written by a sort of mystagogue, someone without the honesty or precision of either poetry or philosophy, so that he bastardized both. Maybe that was unfair; I was young then, & under the influence of the Revised Standard Version ("beware the leaven of the pharisees").
It seems this question of "incarnationalism" vs. "free play of interpretation" could be seen as hinging, partly, on the status of history. If Scripture is the record of divine acts of intervention in history, then the narrative bears a certain factual weight. On the other hand, the philosopher or rabbi or theologian might ask, "what are facts?" Facts are subject to interpretation - especially facts which are the result of human deeds, which themselves usually bear some kind of symbolic import or intent.
It seems words & deeds aren't meant to be alone : separated from each other, both become trivial, meaningless.
How I got started on this, i don't know...
Norman, "talmudic" was hasty & probably inaccurate -- perhaps "midrashic" better?
Henry -- my advocatus diaboli wants to recall many scholars' interpretation of the "son of man" tag in the Gospels as being merely 1st-century polite circumlocution for the 1st person: "son of man" (is it "ben adamah"?) = "the present speaker." But I very much like your heterodox speculations on Jesus's hermeneutics.
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