Manners of Interpretation: The Ends of Argument in Literary Studies (Margins of Literature

by Miguel Tamen

Philosophy and literary theory have devoted a great deal of their analysis to the problem of the origin and modalities of argumentation, but there has been an almost total lack of interest in the question of its procedural limits. Manners of Interpretation is an essay on ways of ending interpretations in literary studies as well as on patterns of controversy and consensus in the humanities. Tamen examines two major families of indisputable arguments in post-Enlightenment literary criticism and addresses the question of how one recognizes the proper time to use a given argument, especially and specifically an indisputable argument. The former aim leads to a tentative history of the constitution of literary theory as a set of identifiable ways of using arguments. The latter, meanwhile, points to a theory of argument and controversy and to a contribution to the discussion of human activities that, in spite of not being teachable, are nevertheless learnable. Such a theory seems to be particularly relevant both to the study of the interpretive dimension of literary criticism as it is now practiced and also to the knowledge and description of an area of the humanities that has often been neglected.

211 pages, Hardcover

First published July 1, 1993

About the author

MIGUEL TAMEN é professor (e director do Programa em Teoria da Literatura) na Universidade de Lisboa. Deu aulas em várias universidades americanas, nomeadamente, desde 2000 como visitante, na Universidade de Chicago. Foi senior fellow no Stanford Humanities Center e Rockefeller Fellow no National Humanities Center. Escreveu vários livros, o último dos quais What Art Is Like.