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Book
There’s No Such Thing as Interpreting a Text
New Directions in Law and Literature
  • Martin J. Stone, Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law
Description

Positively, this chapter sets out various structural differences between literary and legal interpretation. Negatively, it criticizes views of legal and literary interpretation that attempt to derive their features from an account of interpretation-in-general. The thesis that a successful interpretation always recovers an author’s intention is specifically rejected. A “naïve” view of interpretation is defended—the one that appears when we are sunk in practical activity—as opposed to theories of interpretation (e.g., “postmodern” ones) that tend to picture it as ubiquitous and endless.

ISBN
9780190456368
Editor(s)
Elizabeth S. Anker & Bernadette Meyler
Publication Date
6-1-2017
Publisher
Oxford University Press
Keywords
  • law and literature,
  • interpretation,
  • indeterminacy,
  • authorial intention,
  • intentionalism,
  • pluralism,
  • Wittgenstein,
  • Paul de Man
Citation Information
Martin J. Stone. There’s No Such Thing as Interpreting a Text. New Directions in Law and Literature (2017) p. 69
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/martin-stone/16/