"Is There a Meaning in this Text?", Chapter 6

Now that Vanhoozer has resurrected the author, he seeks to redeem the text, showing that literary acts are rational, not simply lost in unconscious motives and words at play. Vanhoozer wants to show that there is a knowable, valid, and right interpretation of the meaning in the communicative act of texts.

Knowledge of texts is not knowledge of what the text is about, but about the text's subject matter and energy. Because authors do things in texts and authors are complex, literary knowledge must be sufficiently "thick" (284). But is interpretation possible? Suppose the author is alive and the text meaningful, can interpreters find anything but their own fabrications? Common sense says, "Of course!", but 'common sense' is a product of a certain language system. George Steiner points out that this means that deconstruction is irrefutable: if everything is interpretation--and deconstruction is content to befall the same reality while it shows it--then there is no proper meaning. However, Steiner bets on meaning, as does Vanhoozer. This he grounds in Reformed Epistemology, saying that interpretation is a properly basic human function. We have interpreting machinery (brains) that, when working properly, interprets properly.

So, then, why is there conflict? More importantly, if there is always conflict of interpretation, is 'knowledge' an appropriate category to describe literary interpretation? As he seeks to answer this question, Vanhoozer defines the primary object of interpretation is "to specify the what, whys, and wherefores of the text considered as communicative action" (293). His theory of knowledge of interpretation is a form of critical realism. This means that Vanhoozer recognizes there are no value free points of view, but affirms that neither are there only value-laden readings. So, the reader must affirm that there is literary knowledge, that she believes she has it, but is not certain she does.

Interestingly, the norm for literary knowledge, even with the author alive and well, is the text itself, but considered as a literary act (303). So, what is the literal sense? Vanhoozer says it entails three elements. The literal meaning of the text is shaped by its historical, narrative, and canonical context.

Next Vanhoozer tackles interpretation vis-a-vis the form of the text. A text's form indicates that it has a different purposes. History is not properly interpreted if read as fantasy, for example, because their forms have different purposes. The purpose of narrative literature is to display a world, according to Mary Louise Pratt (341), but also, according to Susan Snaider Lanser, to take a stance toward it (341). The force of the text, then is to paint, but also to judge. "[T]he way a story is told communicate the author's perspective on the world of the text. To speak of 'point of view' in narrative is to acknowledge that the author's voice and vision is communicated indirectly, in and through the displaying of a world" (341). Lanser says that "'the novel's basic illocutionary activity is ideological construction; its basic plea: hear my word, believe and understand" (341). (Recall that illocutionary force is the energy of the text; the direction the text pushes. Perlocutionary is the purpose of the text, the effects of which may or may not spring from the author's illocutionary force.)

Just like metaphors, genres are indispensable. Genres are necessary aspects of literary communicative acts and are, therefore, not "incidental but [are] essential to the content" (343). "A genre is a covenant, a covenant of discourse" (346). To be a communicative act, it must be sincere, true, and appropriate. This is the responsibility of the author to the reader. The reader must, in turn, pour themselves out to understand the other. [Vanhoozer notes that this might be what N.T. Wright calls a 'hermeneutics of love' (349).] This is so because all knowledge is personal knowing. Indwelling the text, participating in the text is what counts as knowledge. This leads us to Chapter 7.