Meaning, Expression, and the Interpretation of Literature

Abstract

I argue that when we interpret a literary work, we engage with at least two different kinds of meaning, each requiring a distinct mode of interpretation. These kinds of meaning are literary varieties of what Paul Grice called nonnatural and natural meaning. The long-standing debate that began with Beardsley and Wimsatt's attack on the intentional fallacy is, I argue, really a debate about nonnatural meaning in literature. I contend that natural meaning has been largely neglected in our theorizing about literary interpretation and that this comes at a serious cost, resulting in an inadequate account of what interpretation involves. I argue, first, that by recognizing that literary meaning includes both nonnatural and natural meaning, we are better placed to understand the interpreter's relationship with the author, and, second, that recognition of the distinction between nonnatural and natural meaning advances the established debate about literary meaning, offering support for actual intentionalism. The more inclusive view of literary meaning helps resolve an apparent difficulty raised by Noël Carroll.

The eclectic landscape: examining Spanish secondary school teachers’ beliefs on literary education

“…In the classroom, this perspective translates into the need to cultivate the reading habit, assumed in the 70s (see, for example, Patte's, 2023 reflections about the French context) and explored from various points of view, among them from the students' engagement in reading (Hogan, 2018), the support provided to the learner (Colomer et al, 2018;Fabregat, 2022), the professional development of the teacher (Taylor, 2014), the guided interpretative processes (Ballester and Ibarra, 2015), the role of writing in literary education (Schneuwly et al, 2017), free reading (Jiménez-Pérez et al, 2019) or classroom intervention (Colomer et al, 2020).…”