Quote: "Human beings define themselves by the stories they tell as well as by the company they keep. We can only contest one story by telling another. Understanding things means telling stories about things. In stories we (re)make and remake what we call ourselves and what we call the world." (pg. 22)
Comment: I thought this paper was very interesting and thorough in the ways it presented different theories about human interaction with text, not only varied in perspective, but with many examples of how text in different forms sometimes altered the perspectives of theorists. For example, accounts of historical events were discussed in terms of power and the role it has over objective truth (and if it can even be present in written text), where the main disagreement regarding musical works is whether artistic idea is inherent from "page to stage." However, the unifying thesis united all examples under whether interpretation, in and of itself, will change text over time, even if the text itself were to somehow (unlikely) stay the same. Got a bit confused on some of the different theories, but I liked the parts that related to our discussion in class and thought it added a lot of context!
Question: Does the author consider it justifiable but not usually appropriate to apply the lens of modern-day activism (and, with his example, feminism) to historical texts? If so, is that a significant difference from how modern readers, according to many of the theories presented in this work, could read the same text and get vastly different meanings from it? Or is time passing in the context of application of different values significant only in that a greater proportion of people will read a less objective (modernized; theoretical?) account of 'truth'? But is 'truth' even possible in text according to the previous theories? Sorry for the rambling, this is both a clarifying question and a discussion jumping-off point!