Structural Hermeneutics: A Integrating Theory

Abstract

This paper presents an abridged account of what the author calls “structural hermeneutics”. Building on her previous work on “constructive hermeneutics”, the present article explains the reasons for this new nomenclature (“structural hermeneutics”), which had been previously used by the author to refer exclusively to the ideas of thinkers such as Barthes, Bakhtin, or Ricœur. Drawing on the work of these authors, and, in addition, Lotman and Szondi, among others, structural hermeneutics endeavors to continue the task which, had been initiated—in a more or less conscious fashion—by all these forerunners. Therefore, the main goal of structural hermeneutics would consist in bridging the gap between two seemingly opposed or even antagonistic theoretical approaches: hermeneutics, on the one side, and structuralism, on the other side. The present paper traces an original journey across different sources and time periods of literary ideas, ranging from Kantian aesthetics to Russian formalism to Cultural Studies, in order to argue for the necessity of an integrative literary theory capable of bringing together the essential hermeneutic approach to literature and the no less crucial theoretical and methodological contributions of structuralism and semiotics.