The Empirical Study of Literature. How Empirical can it be?

Abstract

This article addresses some of the problems of an empirical study of literature resulting from the fact that it cannot, qua empirical science, engage in the evaluation of literary texts and the moral issues those texts exemplify as well as the further fact (if it is a fact) that statements about textual meanings in the context of literary interpretations are not empirically true or false. Traditional interpretive literary criticism has always played a significant part in the reproduction and modification of culture. From this point of view, an empirical science of literature must appear severely limited. However, it can be argued that such an empirical study of literature can show that interpretation is necessarily a constructive process and therefore always, to a large extent, determined by (often ideological) background assumptions. An empirical study of literature would make interpretation one of its objects of study and explanation. Such investigations would further our understanding of processes of text comprehension in general, but it would also allow us to reconstruct the background assumptions guiding traditional interpretations.