Evolution

Alright Marcus, I'm going to take a stab at answering your initial question. Before that, I'd like to say Kim- I love the fact that you brought up getting stuck on "right" or "wrong" interpretations, it's probably the single issue that bothers me the most. The jury's still out for me, but I'd say your post, and marcus and sylvi's comments land on about the same page as mine.. or at least on pages close together... definitely in the same book though!

Marcus, your question is a really interesting one, and for an answer, based on Zunshine's article I'm going to have to revert to what Prof. Chapman has mentioned in class a few times. This is the idea that our interpretation is an evolutionary, biological phenomenon. Basically, we developed the ability to "read minds" in order to better our chances of survival. I think Zunshine supports this by saying "our cognitive evolutionary heritage structures the ways in which we make sense of fictional narrative..." (1102). This might lead us to think that as a biological factor common to the human race (with exceptions such as autism aside) there might be one common "right" interpretation. However, at the same time, Zunshine acknowledges Richardson and Steen's point: "the history of cognitive structures 'is neither identical to nor separate from the culture they make possible'" (1100).

This leaves me somewhat stumped. If the point is that our interpretation is evolutionary my first instinct is to say then there must be one concrete interpretation, a right answer if you will. However, when you acknowledge differences in the evolutionary process, the various influences of time, place, society and culture, etc on an individual's particular cognitive structures that opens a whole new can of worms and leads back to the last question about a "right" interpretation. What does everyone else think? If there is room for more than one interpretation according to Zunshine, how much room is there? Is there a line and if so where?

What is important?

This is in response to the post just below mine about Zunshine, specifically Marcus’ response to Emily’s question. Marcus said, “My question is this: Zunshine notes that Woolf assumes that we will automatically read a character's body language as indicative of his thoughts and feelings because of our collective past history as readers. How do we know which readings are correct?”

This got me wondering why does a reading even have to be correct, especially a reading within the reader response theory? An interpretive meaning is derived based on those interpretive strategies and interpretive communities that the reader is a part of. There are many different communities; therefore many different readings can come from one specific text. What's wrong with that? As long as the reader is gaining something intellectually, or emotionally from that text, does it matter if it disagrees with another's interpretation?

I sometimes feel like we get too stuck on right and wrong, as well as determining which interpretive strategy is better, that we forget the main theories and ideas actually at hand. Isn’t that what is really important, or is determining the best interpretive strategy more important?

Zunshine

Finally! A reason why certain texts (anyone else have trouble with
Hemingway in high school?) escaped all attempts at my comprehension:
“The personal aesthetics of individual readers thus could be
grounded...in the nuances of their mind-reading capacity” (Zunshine
1098). This article fascinated me because not only do you realize that
when you read you are looking at a world from the author’s
perspective—meaning the author wrote the black marks you are
perusing—but you are also looking at the world through your own eyes, a
character’s eyes (or more than one) and their respective perspectives
of the world. Involved, yes?

In this muddled fashion the reader deal with more than one mindset at
a time (if you will allow characters to have a mindset) and sets of
intentions—at the same time, often in the same scene such as when
Zunshine presented the Mrs. Dalloway example with Richard Dalloway,
Hugh Whitbread and Lady Bruton in the drawing room which leads into the
confusing mesh of fifth and sixth levels of intentionality that the
reader supposedly draws from the text.

Now I have a question.

Could these speculated intentions of author and character be
considered “gaps” according Iser? The reader creatively (if mistakenly)
“fills in” the intentions of characters as exhibited by their physical
actions in the novel? This could particularly be so if the writer is
someone like Hemingway or Woolf who only give us smatterings of
physical action, leaving us to dig frantically for emotional responses.
Zunshine is a reader-response critic so supposedly attributing Iser to
her argument can do no harm and only spur more speculation and debate.

Emily Franzen