This article is concerned with the function of the reader's imagination in the interpretation of poetic works. First, I attempted to examine the problematic mode of existence of poetry as a special literary genre. Regardless of the author and his or h...
This article is concerned with the function of the reader's imagination in the interpretation of poetic works. First, I attempted to examine the problematic mode of existence of poetry as a special literary genre. Regardless of the author and his or her intention, a certain arrangement of word can be read as a poem with the hermeneutical presupposition. Second, I defined the interpretation as rewriting according to a "master code". Third, I regarded the actual reader as an "amazimg reader" or an "a-mazing reader" who would willingly identify himself or herself with the "implied reader" in the poetic text. Last and most important was my investigation of imagination. As image-forming process that supplements the partial perception, imagination can be defined as the synthesizing faculty of "significant totality."
In this respect, imagination or Jungian "active imagination" should be applied to the interpretation of poetic works. The interpretation, however, is required to be restrained by the hermeneutical attitude of which major concern is not the epistemological problem but the relationship between men.
I maintained the reader should develop the hermeneutic imagination in reading poems.