The construction of poetic meaning ☆: A developmental study of symbolic and non-symbolic strategies in the interpretation of contemporary poetry
At a theoretical level this work is an attempt at establishing the empirical study of literature in the phenomenologically influenced theory within reader response criticism. The theoretical frame of reference reflects more exactly the social-constructivist and phenomenologically influenced orientations off Schutz and Berger and Luckmann and the related theories of Fish and Bleich. A study was designed to assess children's and adolescents' spontaneous interpretations of potentially symbolic poetry. 72 subjects participated in the study, equally divided between three age-levels: 11, 14 and 18. The general question of the study may be stated as follows: What kind of interpretive strategies, especially along the dimension interpretive-descriptive and symbolic-non-symbolic, are practiced by readers at various age-levels in order to make sense of contemporary, potentially symbolic, poetry? It was predicted that the number of interpretive responses, including symbolic interpretations, increases with age. The hypothesis was confirmed. In addition, it was possible to categorize the symbolic responses according to level of appropriation, as ranging from rather superficial responses possible to characterize as quasi-symbols, via interpretations based on conventionalized motifs or popular notions, to particularized meanings at a relatively deep level of appropriation. The number of particularized symbolic responses was shown to increase with age. The quantitative results are complemented with comprehensive qualitative descriptions and analyses of the various categories of interpretation discerned.