A wide-ranging, carefully conducted study that should interest a wide range of philosophers of art, language, and culture, especially those concerned with the bridge-building efforts of Margolis, Rorty, Gadamer and others. The author's guiding aim is to show how Davidson’s later ideas on interpretation can serve as a basis for a form of objectivism about interpretation in both conversational and literary contexts, and as a bulwark against strong forms of relativism and historicism, while yet allowing for reasonable pluralism as regards both conversational and literary meanings.