Limits and Tasks of Literary Hermeneutics

The foundation of methodical development of literary hermeneutics represents an altogether new proposition. There existed for centuries an old tradition of philological hermeneutics. It can glory in its venerable origins: the interpretation of ecclesiastical canonical writing, an art which ever since the period of Humanism has been erecting for itself a proud monument of re-edited and corrected texts and commentaries of ancient authors. It can also show just as impressive a result of historical interpretation of the texts of the world's literary past which had served the ideal of an “objective” and therefore scholarly knowledge. However we know that these achievements were not a monopoly of the traditional philological hermeneutics, but were shared with the theological, juridical, philosophical and distorical hermeneutics: in short, with all branches of study concerned with editing, critical study of sources and historical interpretation of the writings of the past. The merits of the traditional hermeneutics of literary texts are so unexceptional, its history so difficult to distinguish from other regional hermeneutics that the epistemologist can speak of a common philological basis and pose the following fundamental question: where does the independence of literary hermeneutics really begin? How has it operated and how does it operate today in order to render justice to the aesthetic character of its texts?