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Overview
In 1990, Umberto Eco gave a series of three lectures on “Interpretation and Overinterpretation”
as part of the Tanner Lectures in Human
Values at Clare Hall, University of Cambridge. (Eco, 1990) The lectures were later reproduced as the first
three chapters in an edited book entitled Interpretation
and Overinterpretation (1992) edited by Stefan Collini. In these lectures,
Eco outlines his concerns about over-interpretive bias in contemporary theory. In
his introduction, Collini characterises these concerns as “the way some of the
leading strands of contemporary critical thought… appear to him to license the
reader to produce a limitless, uncheckable flow of ‘readings’”. Eco asks if
there are limits to what a text can be made to mean, and whether the author’s
intentions should play a part in defining these limits. The limits, he
concludes, are not located in either the author’s intention or the reader’s
interpretation… but in the text itself. Eco’s lectures are followed by three
response chapters by hermeneutic pragmatist Richard Rorty, deconstructionist Jonathan
Culler and novelist-critic Christine Brooke-Rose. Eco concludes the book by
responding to these challenges.
Interpretation and History
In the first lecture, “Interpretation and history”, Eco
seeks to reveal, or even undermine, postmodernism’s relativist foundations. His
goal is to find the middle ground between totally relativist and totally
dogmatic approaches to interpretation. In his words, between a “radical reader
oriented theory of interpretation” where Rorty has noted:
“the critic asks neither the author nor the text about their
intention but simply beats the text into a shape that will serve his purpose. He
makes the text refer to whatever is relevant to that purpose. He does this by
imposing a vocabulary – a grid in Foucault’s terminology – on the text which
may have nothing to do with any vocabulary used in the text or by its author,
and seeing what happens” (1991, p. 151)
and on the other hand, “finding the original intention of
the author”, which may be impossible to discern or irrelevant for the
interpretation of the text. (1992, p. 25) Eco locates postmodern theories of
interpretation within a history of ancient hermeticism and gnosticism. Both his
ancient and postmodern examples consider the study of signs and symbols to be unproductive,
as they are unable to reveal truths, but only displace them elsewhere. (1992, p. 35) Eco could be describing Derridian Deconstruction
when he notes that:
“The reader must suspect that every line […] conceals another
secret meaning; words, instead of saying, hide the untold; the glory of the
reader is to discover that texts can say everything, except what the author
wanted them to mean”. (1992, p. 39)
Acknowledging that in voicing his concerns he has put forth caricatures
of the worst kinds of radical reader oriented theory of interpretation, Eco
nonetheless asserts that caricatures can be good portraits. (1992, p. 40) The possibility to reject absurd interpretations
or agree on reasonable ones disappears when endless possible meanings become
acceptable: this, for Eco characterises “overinterpretation”. The reason for the
apparent return (or persistence) of anti-rationalist relativism, however, is
not addressed. Nonetheless, he sets up the next two lectures by claiming that somewhere
there are criteria for the limits of interpretation and that he intends to find
and delineate them.
Overinterpreting Texts
In lecture two, “Overinterpreting texts”, Eco argues that overinterpretation
can occur even when there are multiple valid interpretations of the text. For Eco,
it is not the reader who produces meanings in the text, but the text which
produces the “model reader”. This is what he calls the “intention of the text”.
The model reader must take their cues from the text, meaning that not all interpretations
are valid and that some will be rejected as preposterous. Eco claims that a
text can “foresee a model reader entitled to try infinite conjectures” but that
this reader is “only an actor who makes conjectures about the kind of model
reader postulated by the text”. (1992, p. 64) Eco proposes “the intention of the text” as a
solution to the excesses of interpretation based on an overestimation of the
possibilities of similarity and analogy (with an implicit nod in the direction
of Foucault).
Between Author and Text
In the third lecture, “Between author and text”, Eco makes the
case for a “liminal author”. The author is “liminal” insofar as he exists on
the threshold between the intention of the author and the linguistic intention displayed
in the text. The author is shaped by his “cultural and linguistic background”; (1992, p. 69) the reader, he tells us, must therefore respect
these boundaries.
All three response chapters take up positions contra Eco. Unsurprisingly,
Rorty makes a passionate case for interpretation, disputing Eco’s distinction
between “using” a text (for irony or parody, for example) and “interpreting” a
text. (1992, p. 93) Culler takes on both Eco and Rorty. He suggests
that the most extreme over-interpretive moments can be the most significant, as
it is in such moments that greater literary and social understandings lie. (1992, p. 110)
Rorty’s challenge forms the main part of Eco’s response. Eco
ends by asserting that “Hiroshima was bombed and that Dachau and Buchenwald
existed” (Eco et al., 1992, p. 150)– thus implicitly linking
over-interpretation to post-truth. He concludes that the author’s intention
may, indeed, set limits to the work’s interpretation.
References
Eco, U. (1990). Interpretation and overinterpretation: World, history,
texts. The Tanner Lectures on Human Values. Presented at the The Tanner
lectures on human values, Clare Hall, Cambridge.
Eco, U., Brooke-Rose, C., Culler, J.,
Collini, S., & Rorty, R. (1992). Interpretation and overinterpretation
(Paperback; S. Collini, Ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Rorty, R. (1991). Consequences of
pragmatism: Essays 1972-1980. Hemel Hempsted: Harvester Wheatsheaf.
