Jonathan Culler, Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction: "Language, meaning, and interpretation"
"Readers interpret informally when they talk to friends about books or films; they interpret to themselves as they read. For the more formal interpretation that takes place in classrooms, there are different protocols. For any element of a work, you can ask what it does, how it relates to other elements, but interpretation may ultimately involve playing the 'about' game: 'so, what is this work really about?' This question is not prompted by the obscurity of a text; it is even more appropriate for simple texts than for wickedly complex ones. In this game, the answer must meet certain conditions: it cannot be obvious, for instance; it must be speculative...what are commonly seen as 'schools' of literary criticism or theoretical 'approaches' to literature are...dispositions to give particular kinds of answers to the question of what a work is ultimately 'about'" (Culler 65).
When it comes to interpretation, it does little to rely on a response such
as “I liked this book because it was fun to read” or “I hated this book because
it was boring and the main character was an idiot.” Though it is a good idea to
have initial pre-critical responses like these to a text and make note of those
responses, stopping at that point limits interpretation. You don’t get real
meaning out of a response like that. Culler asks us to play the about game, where
we ask questions to determine what a work really means.
But the “about” game more complex than merely stating something like “this
book is about a boy and his two dogs, and one of the dogs dies and the other
dog is so sad that she dies, too.” The game is asking for deeper, text-based
conclusions that are backed up by evidence found using literary theory methods.
Instead of coming to a conclusion like the example of the dogs, the conclusion
needs to be less obvious and more speculative. Theories, after all, question
the truth of an object or idea. A better conclusion would look at the details
of a text, the way the words are used, how they and the characters or ideas of
the text are tied to history and ideology, why a text has been seen as
valuable, and a number of other elements inside a literary work. What a text is
really about, or the interpretation you come up with, must be more than a
two-sentence “stuff happened in this book.” Interpretations must have substance, because a literary work must
be worth it.
