Hermeneutics and its New Tendencies: to the Question of Aesthetic Paradigm Change

Abstract

Introduction. The work examines the main vector of development of contemporary literary and hermeneutics studies. The main aim is to show how the view of the text has changed and what are the important tools in the process of its interpretation.Methodology and sources. Firstly, various philosophical and literary approaches to texts are considered. One of the main ideas behind the research method is the comparison of the modernist, post-modernist and meta-modernist paradigm in the process of text interpretation. Another important aspect is the consideration of symptomatic and surface reading, as an important tool in the discussion of whether the text bears any meaning apart from the directly deducable and what is the most contemporary if not the best way of interpreting it. Most texts analyzed are literary examples, mainly taken from Anglophone literature.Results and discussion. The results of the research state a number of tendencies in the view of contemporary hermeneutics. Among the general conclusion of the shift from modernist to post-modern and meta-modern patterns in the narrative. Regarding the process of text interpretation what is stated is a general tendency to see the surface l evel of the text as bearing all the necessary and important meanings. The older and more conservative approach of bringing meaning into the text is also at work, depending on the traditions. Elimination of text interpretation (or denying it its original im portance) is also an important point of view, as it states that a literary text explains more than any supporting attempt of its explanation. Another important feature is a tendency of a modern literary text to adopt characteristics of poetry. The psychoanalytic view is competing with post-modernist or meta-modernist view.Conclusion. Metamodernist tendency, surface reading and attention to the literary text itself, and not its further explanation seems to be the core of a contemporary view of literary texts, their interpretation and, hense, meaning.