1.10: Textual Interpretation

It is the task of the historian of culture to explain why there has been in the last four decades a heavy and largely victorious assault on the sensible belief that a text means what its author meant.

—E. D. HIRSH1

Sounds, Shapes, Gestures, and Dashes and Dots

My generation grew up with two things that have largely been spared to most of you. Radios, newspapers, television, novels, and movies all told us that the world would end in nuclear war. And probably as a result of movies depicting World War II, we all had an idea of the telegraph and Morse code. All this played into a wonderful, if creepy, movie classic, On the Beach. An accidental nuclear war has wiped out most of the world, and only Australia has survivors, but they have less than a year to live. A US Navy ship decides to return to the West Coast, partly because they want to die at home and partly because the Australian base has been receiving gibberish in Morse code from a location in San Diego. What should we make of those seemingly random dashes and dots?

e₁. The base has been receiving gibberish on its telegraph from a source in San Diego.

How should we explain this? Is it a cry for help? A survivor simply desiring long-distance companionship? Or is there some other explanation?

You’re driving on the interstate; you come up quickly on a car ahead, change lanes, and pass. As you pass, the driver’s left hand comes up along the side of his head. Did he just give you an obscene hand gesture? Or was he simply scratching his ear? I text you “Meet you at 11” and get “?” as a response. Are you confused about 11 a.m. or 11 p.m.? Did you mean to text “k,” or did I mistakenly text my mother-in-law, and she has no idea what in the world I’m saying? Just as we must explain identical exams, the car outside Joe’s bar, and morphological similarities in mammalian forelimbs, we often find ourselves in communicative contexts where we must explain gibberish Morse code, potential hand gestures, and “?” in a reply text. It should surprise none of you that I believe inference to the best explanation will be helpful to you in these latter situations.

Inference to the Best Explanation and Textual Interpretation

Historians are concerned with texts, so are legal scholars, and indeed all of us rely on the spoken and printed word as evidence for all sorts of hypotheses. We might well turn to other interpretive disciplines such as biblical hermeneutics and literary criticism for methodological insights. Rather than begin with a tricky legal statute or a puzzling short story, however, it will be clearer, and more amusing, to illustrate the explanatory nature of textual interpretation with an example that does not require the background of an academic specialization. Stanley Fish provides a good one:

I have in mind a sign that is affixed in this unpunctuated form to the door of the Johns Hopkins University Club:

PRIVATE MEMBERS ONLY

I have had occasion to ask several classes what that sign means, and I have received a variety of answers, the least interesting of which is, “Only those who are secretly and not publicly members of this club may enter it.” Other answers fall within a predictable narrow range: “Only the genitalia of members may enter” (this seems redundant), or “You may bring in your own genitalia,” or (and this is the most popular reading perhaps because of its Disney-like anthropomorphism) “Only genitalia may enter.” In every class, however, some Dr. Johnson-like positivist rises to say, “But you’re just playing games; everybody knows that the sign really means, ‘Only those persons who belong to this club may enter it.’” He is of course right.2

Interpreting the sign involves making an inference about what it means. We have a collection of data that is in need of explanation:

e₁. The “text” is on a sign.

e₂. The sign is on a door.

e_3. The door is to the Johns Hopkins University Club.

e₄. The “text” reads, “PRIVATE MEMBERS ONLY.”

Such a characterization of the data implies that we have already done a certain amount of interpretation. We have explained the shapes “PRIVATE MEMBERS ONLY” as an attempt at linguistic communication; they did not accidentally appear when the building was being painted nor are they modern art. Our explanatory question focuses on what these words are intended to communicate. We have a number of explanatory hypotheses:

t₀. Only those persons who belong to this club may enter it.

t₁. Only those who are secretly and not publicly members of this club may enter it.

t₂. Only the genitalia of members may enter.

t₃. You may bring in your own genitalia.

t₄. Only genitalia may enter.

t₅. The sign was intentionally designed with the double meaning by witty intellectuals.

As Fish’s no-nonsense student insists, it is perfectly obvious what the best explanation of the words on the door is. Clearly, t₀ is the simplest, most complete, least ad hoc, and most plausible account. Linguistic communication and interpretation is an inherently explanatory process. From casual conversations and fun signs on doors to the interpretation of literary, constitutional, and biblical texts, the role of the reader (or listener) is always the same. There are shapes, gestures, and noises that need to be explained. Given the first order explanation that they are attempts at linguistic communication, the question now becomes what hypothesis best accounts for the meaning in the present context?

Authorial Intention

Virtually every one of the explanations we have alluded to so far share a common feature. The gibberish was perhaps a cry for help (or sad attempt to find companionship). The gesture might well have expressed his displeasure at your driving. The “?” text probably was a request for more information. The sign was saying who (or what) could or could not come in through the door. The following picture is so natural that we hardly think about it, and that, indeed, is the magic of linguistic (or symbolic) communication. Authors desire to communicate. They use a medium—spoken or written words, Morse code, hand gestures, motion pictures, or smartphone texting—as their means for communicating. In the ideal case, when we are unsure of what they were communicating, we simply ask them, What did you mean? If that proves impossible, as in all the previous cases, we must infer what they meant. As Hirsh put it in this chapter’s epigraph, “A text means what its author meant.”

e_1. There is a text.

e₂. The text has an author.

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t₀. The text means what its author intended it to mean.

A Notorious Interpretation of Hamlet

It was a bad year, indeed, for Hamlet. He left school and returned to Denmark to attend the old king’s—his father’s—funeral. When he arrives, he discovers that his mother has hastily remarried his father’s brother, Claudius, who has installed himself as the new king despite the fact that Hamlet was heir to the throne. If this were not bad enough, his father’s ghost visits him and relates that Claudius, in fact, murdered the old king. Just as you can go to a romcom or a superhero flick and pretty much know what to expect, playgoers in Shakespeare’s time knew they were to be treated to a revenge tragedy. Hamlet would surely spend the rest of the play avenging his father’s murder. Hamlet does eventually kill Claudius but more by accident than an avenging action. In the meantime, for a good four hours of the play, Hamlet mainly dithers, second-guesses himself, and seriously messes up his love life with Ophelia. Why, critics have asked for three hundred years, doesn’t Hamlet get on with it and kill his uncle, as the genre dictates?

Earnest Jones begins his analysis of the play with a very general summary of critical responses:

The most important hypotheses that have been put forward are sub-varieties of three main points of view. The first of these sees the difficulty in the performance of the task in Hamlet’s temperament, which is not suited to effective action of any kind; the second sees it in the nature of the task, which is such as to be almost impossible of performance by any one; and the third in some special feature in the nature of the task which renders it peculiarly difficult or repugnant to Hamlet.3

Besides its fame or perhaps infamy, Jones’s essay offering the Oedipus complex as an interpretation of “the cause of Hamlet’s hesitancy in seeking to obtain revenge for the murder of his father”4 would merit some discussion simply because of its title—“The Oedipus-Complex as an Explanation of Hamlet’s Mystery: A Study in Motive.”5 Jones’s interpretation explicitly appeals to the notion of explanation at two distinct levels. One, of course, is Hamlet’s inaction. Why all the dithering? Jones argues that Hamlet is suffering from an Oedipus complex and offers as evidence in support of this hypothesis several bits of textual data. Inference to the best explanation (IBE) would structure this argument in the following way:

e_1. What we know from the text about Hamlet’s behavior—his inaction, his peculiar relationship with Gertrude, his misogynistic treatment of Ophelia, and so on

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t₀. Hamlet was suffering from an Oedipus complex.

The psychoanalytic diagnosis explains all this puzzling behavior. The obvious critical problem for this interpretation is the embarrassing fact that Shakespeare wrote Hamlet almost three hundred years before Freud identified the Oedipus complex. Jones wisely anticipates the problem and offers an explanation of Shakespeare’s mental state in writing the play.

We have finally to return to the subject with which we started, namely poetic creation, and in this connection to enquire into the relation of Hamlet’s conflict to the inner workings of Shakespeare’s [sic] mind. It is here maintained that this conflict is an echo of a similar one in Shakespeare himself, as to a greater or less extent it is in all men. It is, therefore, as much beside the point to enquire into Shakespeare’s conscious intention, moral or otherwise, in the play as it is in the case of most works of genius. The play is the form in which his feeling finds its spontaneous expression, without any inquiry being possible on his part as to the essential nature or source of that feeling.6

So now we are presented with an explanation not just of the events in the play but of its author as well. Again, Jones offers evidence. He points out that the Hamlet story was widely known in Shakespeare’s time, that the famous Thomas Kyd version was on the contemporary scene, and that “Shakespeare in 1585 christened his own son Hamnet, a frequent variation of the name.”7 The key, however, for Jones is Shakespeare’s own father.

Highly suggestive, therefore, of the subjective origin of the psychical conflict in the play is the fact that it was in September, 1601, that Shakespeare’s father died, an event which might well have had the same awakening effect on old “repressed” memories that the death of Hamlet’s father had with Hamlet; his mother lived till some seven years later. There are many indications that the disposition of Shakespeare’s father was of that masterful and authoritative kind so apt to provoke rebellion, particularly in a first-born son.8

Thus we get a linked argument reminiscent of the reasoning from the chalk on Watson’s hand to the decision not to invest or the two-step inferences in cases of testimony.

e₁. What we know from the text about Hamlet’s behavior—his inaction, his peculiar relationship with Gertrude, his misogynistic treatment of Ophelia, and so on

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t′₀. Hamlet was suffering from an Oedipus complex.

e₂. Shakespeare’s familiarity with the Hamlet legend and Kyd’s version of the play

e₃. Shakespeare’s son’s name

e₄. Shakespeare’s father’s temperament

e₅. The death of Shakespeare’s father 1601

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t″_0. Shakespeare himself suffered from Oedipus complex and unconsciously transferred character traits from himself to Hamlet.

The million-dollar questions are, of course, whether t′₀ and t″₀ are the best explanations of the textual and authorial data. I think we would be hard pressed to find many defenders of the Jones hypotheses. The problem is not so much the quality of Jones’s reasoning but the Freudian paradigm that he so candidly and enthusiastically buys into. If one is skeptical that such a thing as an Oedipus complex exists, one is going to find it very difficult to explain the actions and creations of literary characters and authors in terms of it.

A Contemporary Psychological Interpretation of Hamlet

It is interesting in this connection to consider a more contemporary psychological account of Hamlet. A. B. Shaw has recently argued that Hamlet suffered from depressive illness and that this diagnosis explains his failure to exact revenge.

Hamlet is a creature of Shakespeare’s imagination . . . He is not an actual patient. Therefore clinical diagnosis must be tentative, but there is good evidence in the play for depressive illness. Depressive illness is characterized by low mood, anhedonia, negative beliefs, and reduced energy. Hamlet actually calls himself melancholic and the very first speech he makes in the play is devoted to a public statement of his melancholy.9

Shaw now proceeds to show how the text clearly shows Hamlet manifesting these clinical indicators:

e₁. Hamlet exhibits anhedonia—for example, “He speaks at length to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, saying he has lost all mirth and that man does not delight him.”10

e₂. Hamlet expresses negative beliefs—for example, “He calls Denmark a prison. His comments to Ophelia on women are bitter.”11

e₃. Hamlet “alludes to sleep disturbance ‘were it not that I had bad dreams.’”12

e₄. Hamlet “has experienced events likely to precipitate depression: his father’s sudden death, his mother’s hasty marriage, and his disappointment in the succession.”13

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t₀. Hamlet suffered from depressive illness.

Shaw argues further that it is no embarrassment whatsoever that depressive illness only entered the clinical paradigm centuries after the play was written. We certainly grant that people suffered from this devastating condition long before psychology and medicine cataloged and began to treat it. Shakespeare was an excellent student of the human condition. Just as a perceptive author can recognize overly ambitious characters, jealous lovers, and power-mad leaders, Shakespeare can recognize a person exhibiting the behavior brought on by depressive illness—what his contemporaries would have called melancholy. Further, he can locate his depressive lead character in a play with perhaps larger and different artistic motives.

We can only assess the quality of Shaw’s depressive illness interpretation, of course, by comparing his explanation of key parts of the play to the many rival interpretations that have been offered in the past three hundred years. I make no claim that Shaw’s explanation is the best explanation for two reasons. One is that I am not a qualified critical scholar, and this is a book about evidence evaluation, not Shakespearian critical analysis. The second is a kind of intellectual confession. I find the play both aesthetically and intellectually fascinating. Every time I read a thoughtful interpretation of Hamlet, I find myself being won over to that critic’s point of view. I recognize, of course, that all these critics can’t be right, since many consciously write to refute one another.

I suspect that my problem lies with the whole notion of truth—truth in science, truth in literary analysis, and truth in constitutional interpretation, a topic we will return to in later chapters.

EXERCISES AND QUIZ TEN

Retrieved from https://www.flickr.com/x/t/0090009/photos/mastababa/2354567815/.

Retrieved from https://www.flickr.com/x/t/0099009/photos/mstabbycat/3127520409/.

Here are three images of signs I found on the web. A fourth image, which was protected by copyright, showed pedestrians walking a street with a sign in the foreground that read, “GO SLOW: ACCIDENT PORN AREA.”

You may choose any one you want for this chapter’s quiz. The others may be used as practice exercises.

The directions for the quiz and the practice exercises are all the same. What is the sign saying—what does it mean? Defend your interpretation of the sign using the tools we have developed in this chapter. The fun, I believe, will be in coming up with your rival explanations.

Notes

1. E. D. Hirsch, “In Defense of the Author,” Validity in Interpretation (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1967), 1.

2. Stanley Fish, Is There a Text in This Class? (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982), 274–75.

3. E. Jones, “The Oedipus-Complex as an Explanation of Hamlet’s Mystery: A Study in Motive,” American Journal of Psychology 21, no. 1 (1910): 75.

4. Jones, 74.

5. Jones, 74.

6. Jones, 102–3.

7. Jones, 103.

8. Jones, 103.

9. A. B. Shaw, “Depressive Illness Delayed Hamlet’s Revenge,” Medical Humanities 28, no. 2 (2002): 92–96.

10. Shaw, 92.

11. Shaw, 92.

12. Shaw, 92.

13. Shaw, 93.