Abstract
A specific method for literary interpretation on the interface of phenomenology and the social sciences is based on life-world analysis taking over a hermeneutic perspective. Starting from Alfred Schutz’s assumption that art, amongst other things, is the conscious reinterpretation of structures of relevance of the life-world, the paper introduces the Schutzian conception of literary interpretation which is characterized by the aim of reconstructing the “logic of the poetic event” which runs contrary to everyday life and rational thinking. After connecting life-world theoretical with socio-scientific hermeneutical reflections to capture the triangular relationship of author, work and recipient, Schutz’s interpretation of Goethe’s “Wilhelm Meister’s Journeyman Years” will be presented. This analysis will be enhanced by symbol-theoretical reflections which serve for a further phenomenologically oriented interpretation of an excerpt of “Journeyman Years” with a specific emphasis on reverence and religious motives.
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- 1.
The following reflections refer to Schutz’s interpretation of the “Journeyman Years”, which is part of an extensive handwritten article with the title “Zu Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahren” from 1948. Schutz himself, in a letter to Frieda Wunderlich, mentions that this manuscript contains “more or less notes”. Nevertheless, his analysis demonstrates the specific relevance of Schutz’s theory of the life-world for the interpretation of literary texts. Schutz’s Goethe interpretations will be published in Vol. VIII of the German Alfred Schutz Work Edition (Alfred Schütz Werkausgabe) (Schutz 2013).
- 2.
Schutz’s “Journeyman Years” essay is a 142-page long handwritten manuscript composed in German in 1948 on a sea passage from New York to Amsterdam (in: Schutz 2013).
- 3.
While the symbol of the Christian cross as stake epitomizes death, it also symbolizes resurrection and the overcoming of death. Thus, in this context it enables believing Christians to deal with the existential fate of death. With the effectiveness of the cross as a collective symbol with conflicting meanings, death and resurrection can be harmonized allowing individuals to ‘cope’ with the unimaginable, inconceivable with the help of religious symbolism.
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Dreher, J. (2014). Life-World Analysis and Literary Interpretation. On the Reconstruction of Symbolic Reality Spheres. In: Staudigl, M., Berguno, G. (eds) Schutzian Phenomenology and Hermeneutic Traditions. Contributions to Phenomenology, vol 68. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6034-9_15
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