On Interpretation

PATRICK COLM HOGAN is a professor of English at the University of Connecticut specializing in cognitive approaches to literary and critical theory as well as postcolonial and world literature and nonwestern theory. Recent publications include Cognitive Science, Literature, and the Arts: A Guide for Humanists and The Mind and Its Stories: Narrative Universals and Human Emotion. He is editor of the forthcoming Cambridge Encyclopedia of the Language Sciences.

Hogan's book will make a significant contribution to the field of hermeneutics. It is lucidly and elegantly written, incisively argued, and refreshingly devoid of jargon and pretension. Among its strengths is its recognition of the rich insights to be gleaned from analytic philosophers, who, for the most part, are ignored by the dominant discourse of poststructuralism. That his book engages the mind at every turn and generates argument and response is testimony to its substance and power.