The Problem of Meaning in Narrative and Ricoeur`s Hermeneutics

Abstract

呂格爾(Paul Ricoeur 1913- )的詮釋學近年來被廣泛應用到社會科學、宗教學科和文學批評各方面，可謂當代顯學之一。敘事文(Narrative)在文學類型上佔重要地位，涵蓋史詩、神話、小說、歷史文獻……等等。本文從呂格爾的詮釋學出發來探討敘事文的意義問題，指出其中包含「涵意」與「指涉」兩個相互辯證的層次。「涵意」乃由敘事文之結構所規定，結構分析涉及了知識論上「解釋」的運作。至於「指涉」的問題則由於存在的詮釋而引起，涉及知識論上「理解」的運作。本文並檢查布洛普(Propp)的形式主義解析與布勒曼 (Bremond)，葛萊瑪斯(Greimas)和李維．史陀(Levi-Strauss)的結構主義解析，依據呂格爾的詮釋學予以批判反省，指出其中詮釋上的假設，並從敘事者和歷史性的角度來討論敘事文的指涉問題。

In this article, the author tries first to mark the difference of Ricoeur`s Methodological Hermeneutics from Heidegger and Gadamer`s Philosophical Hermeneutics, in order to assure the philosophical background on which Ricoeur orients his studies of the interpretation of text - especially narrative texts. Sense and reference are two aspects of a text in dialectical interaction. For Paul Ricoeur, the sense of a narrative text is determined by its structure, and any structural analysis contains the epistemological operation that we call “explanation”. Now the problem of reference emerges with the interpretation of the narrative text which obliges another epistemological operation, namely “understanding”. We examine first the formal or the structural analyses proposed by Propp, Bremond, Greimas and Levi-Strauss, in order to explain the stuctural framework in which the sence of a narrative text appears. Then we follow Ricoeur`s hermeneutics to make explicit the function of interpretation implied in the above structural explanation. The problem of reference will be discussed adn re-interpreted in the light of Ricoeurian hermeneutics.