Explication versus Interpretation, a Lesson in Literary Theory

This series of blog posts began as a set of observations about literary research on the novel A Confederacy of Dunces (Confederacy), by John Kennedy Toole, but I have extended it to include the theory of humor and evolutionary literary criticism. This blog entry is strictly about literary theory, but it uses one of my studies of Confederacy as an example.

I have been reading an old textbook on literary theory, to discipline my mind while thinking about evolutionary literary criticism. The textbook is Jeremy Hawthorn. Unlocking the Text: Fundamental Problems in Literary Theory. London: Edward Arnold, 1987. I like this text. It is clear and incisive, IMHO. It promotes an understanding of literary theory that studies the entire process of literary production and use, not just the text itself.

In the text, Hawthorn makes a distinction between explication and interpretation. "In English, 'explication' normally denotes the uncovering of what we may refer to as a literary work's 'primary meaning', as distinct from those deeper levels of meaning and signficance produced by interpretation" (23). The primary meaning relates more to what the words mean, the sentences mean, what direct references the text holds, etc. The interpretation is more abstract, and it also might be more creative, such as when an actor interprets the words in a screenplay.

I tried to think of an example of the distinction, and one immediately came to me. In my 2012 article "The Dialectic of American Humanism", I begin by showing that A Confederacy of Dunces can be viewed as a detailed parody of the philosophy of Marsilio Ficino. Then I argue that at a deeper level, the novel can be seen as offering up two versions of humanism, and engaging them in a dialectic, hence my article's title.

My claim "that Confederacy is a parody of Ficino" is established by a detailed mapping of particulars in the novel to points in Ficino's philosophy. Therefore, such a claim is an explication. My claim "that Confederacy is a dialectic among competing versions of humanism" is more of an interpretation. It is less tied to the words on the page and is more abstract.