ABSTRACT
Turning away from an old-fashioned explication de texte, a criticism with any aspirations to profundity chooses as its purpose the determination of a meaning: it describes itself as interpretive, in the broad sense. What is to be gained by replacing explanation (which answers the question, how is the work made?) by interpretation (why is the work made?). At first it seems that we have enlarged the domain of criticism from a myopic study of means to an exploration of ends, posing the essential questions, not only about the form of the literary work, but also about its signification.
