Understanding and improvement in "Oda a la vida retirada" by Fray Luis

Abstract

In Critical Understanding: The Powers and Limits of Pluralism (1979), Wayne Booth introduces the dichotomy understanding/overstanding to establish the difference between the positive interpretation of the literary work and all those overinterpretations which are susceptible, unlike the forced and abusive readings, to reach a critical consensus. Such is the case of the Lapesa’s interpretation about the allegorical meaning of the sea in Fray Luis’ Oda a la vida retirada in the light of the historical events occurred in the Spanish 16th Century. From the point of view of this singular reading given by the renowned Hispanist, this article will focus on the troublesome argument upon the interpretation’s limits and the main changes concerning Hermeneutics today, after the consolidation of deconstructive criticism, whose model claims the hermeneutical relativism as a result of literature’s essential ambiguity and instability.