| After revisiting the sources of hermeneutics in the ancient Greek practices of hermeneia ("poetic saying," "explaining," and "translating"), this dissertation proposes the notion of "hermeneutics as poetic transformation"---i.e. as an existential and ethical attitude that vitally engages the reader (the interpreter) in the understanding of "otherness." This proposal is followed by an exploration of several ways in which such a hermeneutic attitude might manifest itself, by using specific case studies drawn from diverse cultural traditions and periods. Chapters are hence organized as follows: (1) oneiric hermeneutics---an inquiry into the role of dream in testimonial narrative: Gabriel Garcia Marquez's The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor; (2) diacritical hermeneutics---a critical study of transformations between seer and seen in the interpretation of otherness: Elena Poniatowska's Here's to You, Jesus!; (3) divinatory hermeneutics---on responding to the substance of possibility in poetic images: George de la Tour's renderings of the Repentant Magdalene meditating on a candle flame; (4) subversive hermeneutics---on undoing ill-made durations through openness to the gift and call of the instant: Shelley's Prometheus Unbound; and (5) alchemical hermeneutics---on transmuting culture complexes through the poetic rewriting of national myths: Arguedas's Deep Rivers and The Fox from Above and the Fox from Below.; While each of the works analyzed itself offers an illustration of hermeneutics "as poetic transformation" (be it through an oral informant, a writer, painter, or poet who wrestles with crisis experiences or inherited myths through language and art), the reader is in turn called to approach each work not merely as a created product, but as an ethical summons to participate creatively in the processes of "literature litteraturans"---Gaston Bachelard's term for the transcendent aspect of Spinoza's "natura naturans"---in the education of the soul (Lat. e + ducare). Beyond a theoretical reflection on the nature and ethical possibilities of a "poetic hermeneutics," then, this is largely an essay on applied hermeneutics that proceeds on the premise that the practice of interpretation is apt to yield unexpected insights that can critically challenge, and at times significantly transform, our preconceptions and hermeneutic paradigms. |
