Reference:
Review Excerpts 'I should like to pause at a preliminary question which in fact dominates the
whole of our investigation. The question is this: what is a text?... Let us say that a
text is any discourse fixed by writing' (145).
Domains: Under construction |
Key Terms: | discourse | investigation |
text |
writing |
'The book divides the act of writing and the act of reading into two sides,
between which there is no communication' (146).
Domains: Under construction |
Key Terms: | act | communication |
reading |
writing |
'Writing preserves discourse and makes it an archive available for individual
and collective memory' (147).
Domains: Under construction |
Key Terms: | collective | discourse |
memory |
writing |
'I propose to show that the concept of the text, such as we have formulated it
in the first part of this essay, demands a renewal of the two notions of explanation
and interpretation and, in virtue of this renewal, a less contradictory conception of
their interrelation' (147).
Domains: Under construction |
Key Terms: | concept | conception |
explanation |
interpretation |
text |
'We explain the text in terms of its internal relations, its structure. On the other
hand, we can lift the suspense and fulfil the text in speech, restoring it to living
communication; in this case, we interpret the text.... Reading is the dialectic of
these two attitudes' (147-54).
Domains: Under construction |
Key Terms: | case | communication |
dialectic |
reading |
structure |
text |
'The working hypothesis of any structural analysis of texts is this: in spite of
the fact that writing is on the same side as speech in relation to language --
namely, on the side of discourse -- the specificity of writing in relation to speech
is based on structural features which can be treated as analogues of language in
discourse' (154).
Domains: Under construction |
Key Terms: | analysis | discourse |
hypothesis |
language |
relation |
writing |
'To read is, on any hypothesis, to conjoin a new discourse to the discourse
of the text' (158).
Domains: Under construction |
Key Terms: | discourse | hypothesis |
text |
'Interpretation retains the feature of appropriation ... By "appropriation", I
understand this: that the interpretation of a text culminates in the
self-interpretation of a subject who thenceforth understands himself better'
(158).
Domains: Under construction |
Key Terms: | interpretation |
text |
'Initially the text had only a sense, that is, internal relations or a structure; now
it has a meaning, that is, a realisation in the discourse of the reading subject'
(159).
Domains: Under construction |
Key Terms: | discourse | meaning |
reading |
structure |
text |
'To explain is to bring out the structure, that is, the internal relations of
dependence which constitute the statics of the text, to interpret is to follow the
path of thought opened up by the text, to place oneself en route towards the orient
of the text' (161-2).
Domains: Under construction |
Key Terms: | structure | text |
thought |
Last Modified:
July-12-96 10:24:11
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