A Ricoeur Reader: Reflection and Imagination This page intentionally left blank A Ricoeur Reader: Reflection and Imagination Edited by Mario J. Valdés UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS Toronto and Buffalo © University of Toronto Press 1991 Toronto and Buffalo Printed in Canada ISBN 0-8020-5880-9 (cloth) ISBN 0-8020-6814-6 (paper) Theory/Culture 2 oo Printed on acid-free paper Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data Ricoeur, Paul A Ricoeur reader: reflection and imagination (Theory/culture; 2) Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 0-8020-5880-9 (bound) ISBN 0-8020-6814-6 (pbk.) 1. Hermeneutics. 2. Criticism. 3. Ricoeur, Paul I. Valdés, Mario J., 1934- . II. Title. III. Series. B2430.R551 1991 121'.68 C91-093222-0 To Simone Ricoeur and Maria Elena de Valdés and in memory of Northrop Frye This page intentionally left blank Contents ACKNOWLEDGMENTS / ix INTRODUCTION: Paul Ricoeur's Post-Structuralist Hermeneutics / 3 I / Philosophical Context for a Post-Structuralist Hermeneutics What Is a Text? Explanation and Understanding / 43 Word, Polysemy, Metaphor: Creativity in Language / 65 Appropriation / 86 The Human Experience of Time and Narrative / 99 The Function of Fiction in Shaping Reality /117 Mimesis and Representation /137 II / The Dialectic of Engagement Habermas / 159 Geertz / 182 Construing and Constructing: A Review of The Aims of Interpreta- tion by E.D. Hirsch, Jr /195 Review of Nelson Goodman's Ways of Worldmaking / 200 The Conflict of Interpretations: Debate with Hans-Georg Gadamer / 216 Northrop Frye's Anatomy of Criticism, or the Order of Paradigms / 242 Greimas's Narrative Grammar / 256 On Narrativity: Debate with AJ. Greimas / 287 III / Aspects of Post-Structuralist Hermeneutics Metaphor and the Main Problem of Hermeneutics / 303 viii Contents Writing as a Problem for Literary Criticism and Philosophical Hermeneutics / 320 Narrated Time / 7338 Time Traversed: Remembrance of Things Past / 355 Between the Text and Its Readers / 390 Life: A Story in Search of a Narrator / 425 IV/ The Dialogical Disclosure: Interviews with Paul Ricoeur Phenomenology and Theory of Literature / 441 Poetry and Possibility / 448 The Creativity of Language / 463 Myth as the Bearer of Possible Worlds / 482 World of the Text, World of the Reader / 491 PAUL RICOEUR'S WORK IN ENGLISH / 499 INDEX / 505 Acknowledgments An editor of a volume of collected papers has a long list of acknowl- edgments to include, and I am no exception. My major debt is to Paul Ricoeur, who made his work available for my scrutiny and whose generosity is matched only by his intellectual honesty and profes- sional rigour. His concern throughout his work has been with the quality of writing presented to the reader. I also wish to acknowledge María Elena de Valdés's assistance with this project, beginning with her suggestion that I collect Ricoeur's papers on literary criticism and theory. I would also like to thank David Pellauer of De Paul University and Philosophy Today for his generous assistance in locating some of the more obscure publica- tions, and my colleague L.M. Findlay, at the University of Saskat- chewan, who took time to advise me on the selection of the papers included in this collection. I have profited from his counsel, as he will recognize from this volume's contents. I wish to acknowledge the dedication and hard work on this project of my research assistant, Mr Luis Torres. Finally, I wish to thank all the editors and publishers listed in the following brief publication history of the papers included here for their kind permission to reprint. 'What is a Text? Explanation and Understanding' (1970). From Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences, translated and edited by John B. Thompson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; Paris: Edi- tions de la Maison des Sciences de l'Homme, 1981), pp. 145–64. Reprinted with permission. This article was originally published in French as 'Qu'est-ce qu'un texte? Expliquer et Comprendre,' in Hermeneutik und Dialectic, vol.