Abstract
This chapter is aimed at analyzing how the listener can comprehend the narrator’s speech. It treats the notion of text and its double nature as an object of interpretation and as an interpretation itself. Discussing Genette’s notion of paratext, Jacobson’s model of communication, and Eco’s theory of interpretation, a provisory model is proposed regarding three type of interpretation according the main point of view that is chosen: the point of view of the Author, the point of view of the text, and that of the reader. It is shown how these ways of interpreting can work together and cooperate using excerpts of a psychoanalytical session as examples. In this way, the concept of narrative interpretation is proposed. It is meant as an act of cooperation among these different points of view with which an interpretation is elaborated.
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- 1.
In 1960, the Lisbon National Library purchased a linen trunk found in Pessoa’s house, in which more than 27,000 documents made it possible to understand Pessoa’s heteronymy. In the words of Pessoa: “Since I was a child I have had the tendency to create a fictitious world around me, to surround myself with friends and acquaintances who had never existed [...] Ever since I met myself as the one I call “I” I remember having mentally drawn, in appearance, movements, character and history, various unreal figures that were so visible to me and mine as things of what we call maybe abusively real life” (letter of 13 January 1935 to Adolfo Casais Monteiro, in Parini [2012, 21]). See also Ceccucci (2012) for the problem of heteronyms.
- 2.
In a much earlier work (Bruner et al. 1978) Bruner himself highlights the links of phylogenetic and ontogenetic dependence of language on action: the syntax of language is derived from the syntax of action (see the “cases”: agent, action, object, place, etc.). Language would slowly autonomize itself from actions (Bruner et al. 1978, 56).
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Smorti, A. (2020). Text and Interpretation. In: Telling to Understand. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-43161-7_11
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