V. Hermeneutics or Theory
The terms and definitions provided thus far represent a "structuring
of reality," which cannot be "true" but can perhaps be useful. It can be
used in two fundamentally different ways that correspond to hermeneutics
and literary critical theory. Photography again provides a good though not
perfect analogy, since photographs can also be treated in these two ways.
One could say that the Material Text is not the Work, but like a
photograph, it represents the work, so that a person contemplating the
Material Text (photograph) can create a mental construct corresponding to
that which was photographed. There are, in this view of the matter, two
reception images: one of the photograph or Material Text itself and another
of that which was photographed or the "created world" in the work of
art.[35] Another useful analogy to
emphasize this hermeneutical use of the taxonomy is musical. The Material
Text is like
the score of music; the Reception Performance is like the concert which
created the musical event when the score is played. Thus the documentary
musical score and the musical performances it enables are separate though
related referents; likewise the Material Text and the Reception
Performances it enables are separate though related. Reception
Performances actually have two distinguishable parts—the first is the
construction of a Reception Text, the second is the interpretation of and
response to it. In the analogy with music, constructing the Reception Text
is like an orchestra playing the music. Response to the Reception Text is
analogous to listening to and responding to the played music. The reader is
orchestra and audience rolled into one for a literary work. This distinction
is readily seen as applicable to drama. Not only is there a difference
between the written text of a play and the performances on
stage—both
of which precede Reception Performance by the audience in a
theater—but there are often differences between the written text for
performance and the written text for publication, the later intended to be
performed as a reading (closet drama) rather than as a stage
performance.
[36] It is important to note
that the reader's responses are not to the "work itself" but to the Reception
Text. The quality of the Reception Text depends in part on the Material
Text used as a basis and in part on the skill and quality of its rendition as
performance; halting or inattentive readers are not likely to perform
technically "good" Reception Texts, but this will not keep them from
responding to them.
The taxonomy I have suggested, then, shows not only how
interpretation or other protocols depending on a specific Material Text to
reconstruct a Work might differ from other protocols depending on other
Material Texts with the same title, but it shows how interpretations of the
same Material Text by two persons or by the same person on two different
occasions might also be different—each experience of the Work is
based
on a separately constructed Reception Text in a separate Reception
Performance using a particular (and partial) representation of the
work.
The second way of looking at this taxonomy is analogous to literary
critical theory, focusing attention on the phenomenon of works embodied
in Material Texts rather than focusing on the interpretation of those texts.
In the analogy with photography, it is an examination of the photograph as
photograph and photography as a process rather than seeing the photograph
as representation of something else. The photograph becomes, in a way, an
end in itself with its own meaning and ways of meaning regardless of any
correspondence between itself and some other object or objects towards
which the camera was aimed when the exposure was made. The critic's
attention might be focused on technique, composition, texture and any
number of other things relevant to the photograph as object and as result of
process, all of which are unconcerned with "realism" or accuracy of
representation. In photography each newly developed picture from a single
negative is a material object which may be considered
as a separate work; viewers of more than one copy might comment on the
differences and prefer one to another for various technical and aesthetic
reasons. We can use this taxonomy, therefore, to illuminate a variety of
interests relating to process rather than to interpretation.
Literary critical theory has focused its attention primarily, though not
exclusively on the portion of this taxonomy indicated by the terms
Linguistic Text, Creative Performance, and Reception Performance. These
correspond to the West, North, and East in the "map" of related interests
described in section II. Literary critical theory has tended to neglect the
portions indicated by Versions, Material Texts, and Production
Performance. These correspond to the South and, astonishingly, the center
of the "map." Marxist criticism has paid attention to Material Texts and
Production Performance, but has tended to neglect or down-play Creative
Performance and the mental constructs of Works and Versions. Textual
criticism, until recently focused primarily on the Linguistic Texts and
Creative Performance, has tended to neglect or deemphasize Production
Performance and Reception Performance. To the
extent that textual critics neglect Reception Performance, they turn a blind
eye to the role of their own Reception Performance in "reconstructing"
authorial intention.
