Charles Altieri - Act & quality: a theory of literary meaning and humanistic understanding

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title	:	Act & Quality : A Theory of Literary Meaning and Humanistic Understanding
author	:	Altieri, Charles.
publisher	:	University of Massachusetts Press
isbn10 | asin	:	0870233270
print isbn13	:	9780870233272
ebook isbn13	:	9780585186764
language	:	English
subject	Hermeneutics, Literature--History and criticism--Theory, etc, Literature--Philosophy, Semantics.
publication date	:	1981
lcc	:	PN81.A453eb
ddc	:	808/.00141
subject	:	Hermeneutics, Literature--History and criticism--Theory, etc, Literature--Philosophy, Semantics.

Page i Act & Quality A Theory of Literary Meaning and Humanistic Understanding Charles Altieri The University of Massachusetts Press Amherst

Page ii Copyright (c) 1981 by The University of Massachusetts Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Altieri, Charles, 1942 Act and quality. Bibliography: p. 1. Hermeneutics. 2. Semantics. 3. Literature Philosophy. I. Title. PN81.A453 808'.00141 81-2147 ISBN 0-87023-327-0 AACR2

Page iii CONTENTS Introduction 1 Part One 1. Wittgenstein and the Nature of Linguistic Signs 23 2. Grammar, Speech Act Theory, and Gricean Pragmatics: The Foundations of a Dramatistic View of Language 53 3. The Concept of Action, and the Consequences for Hermeneutic Theory 97 4. A Test Case of Action Description: Interpreting Williams' "This is Just to Say" 160 Part Two Introduction 179 5. A Procedural Definition of Literature and the Concept of Performance 181 6. Literary Procedures and the Question of Indeterminacy 214 7. Toward an Intensional Text Grammar: The Constituents of Literary Performance 238 8. Literary Reference and Literary Experience as a Means of Knowledge 270 9. Self-Reflection and Reading as a Source of Social Values 308 Bibliography 332 Index 341

Page v ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I first began planning this book during moments of despair, rage, and intense pleasure at Literature and Philosophy Colloquia sponsored by The State University of New York at Buffalo. I hope the finished work reflects and celebrates the spirit of inquiry fostered during those years. Still present in their absence are Eugenio Donato, Lionel Abel, Joe Riddel, Norman Holland, Irving Massey, Ed Dryden, Homer Brown, Murray Schwartz, Neil Schmitz, Art Effron, Al Baum, Jim Bunn, and Ken Dauber. Absent in their presence, on the other hand, are the extremely capable and devoted editorial staff at the University of Massachusetts Press and the following editors who worked with earlier versions of some of these materials-Richard Macksey (MLN), Michael Hancher (Centrum), Ralph Cohen (New Literary History), Tom Mitchell (Critical Inquiry), and Paul Hernadi, who edited What is Literature (Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 1978). The work necessary to organize and develop this project was sponsored by a summer grant from The New York State Research Foundation and a Younger Humanist Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities. (I want also to mention the productive anger created by several organizations who rejected my applications for support.) The many revisions were facilitated (and guilt reduced) by the unfailing kindness of the secretarial staffs of SUNY Buffalo and the University of Washington. Their work and mine was made more difficult by the sharp criticisms of those who read parts or all of the manuscript at various stages-a task only partially imaginable by those who complete this ver-

Page vi sion. For this I express special thanks to Carl Dennis, David Tarbet, Eric La Guardia, John Webster, Renato Rosaldo and, above all, to Leroy Searle who read it all twice and offered penetrating remarks (as did one especially kind and thorough, but nameless, reader for an academic press). Finally I want to thank my wife Joanne who read most of the book despite her wishes and best judgment, and who put up with the anxieties and angers created by my private reactions to the criticisms I acknowledge above. I would like to dedicate this book to the spirit of the Buffalo English department. It exemplified for me, and still exemplifies, the ideal of affection and respect for others based on the intensity and clarity of their expressions. In the spirit of conflict we learned self-delight, and in working to maintain that self-delight through conflict we all learned to appreciate complexity almost as much as I did the dream of "truth."

Page vii Some certified nut Will try to tell you it's poetry, (It's extraordinary, it makes a great deal of sense) But watch out or he'll start with some

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