Deformance and interpretation

Jerome McGann

Lisa Samuels

pp. 151-180

in: Joan Retallack, Juliana Spahr (eds), Poetry & pedagogy, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2006

Abstract

Works of imagination encourage interpreters, who respond in diverse and inventive ways. The variety of critical practices—indeed, the number of differing interpretations directed at the same works—can obscure the theoretical commonality that holds these practices together. We can draw an immediate distinction, however, between critical practices that do or do not aim to be interpretive: bibliographical studies and prosodie analysis, for example, typically discount their interpretive moves, if any are explicitly engaged.