Here I attempt to explain how literary theory, whose concern is interpreting texts, has expanded into Theory, that “totalizing account of human consciousness and human culture’ (David Lodge). In my view the problematic of reading literary texts is intimately connected with a much wider problematic, since (1) reflection on the problematic of reading literary texts provides a privileged access to “reading in general,” and (2) the problematic of reading in general is part of the problematic of the project of modernity, that is, the project of becoming (in a sense defined by Descartes, Kant and Hegel) ‘‘self-conscious.” Any reflection on reading becomes finally a reflection on the project of modernity, and thus by neglecting its own (artificially drawn) limits, literary theory naturally becomes Theory.

Interpretation is not just a single level of discourse. The complicated relationship among critical theories, the interpretation of theories, theoretical criticism and meta-criticism needs to be dissected in order to look closely at the strengths and limitations of interpretation. First this paper looks at two positions of modern hermeneutics: Eric Donald Hirsch and Martin Heidegger, and notes their inevitable limitations. Then it moves onto two different positions of reading the Other (Chang Lung-hsi and Ut Leibman Schaub) and Liao Ping-hui’s reading of them. Next the two positions of textuality represented by Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida through the eyes of Edward Said are explored pointing out the paradoxes between Foucault and Derrida and Said’s own reading of them. Finally the application of textuality is brought to bear in Sino-Western comparative literature. The problem focuses at this point on the way to prevent suppression by the discourse of the dominant culture through an appropriate appreciation of the problem and paradox of interpretation and textuality.

Traditional Buddhist story-telling or pien-wen has been viewed as the earliest phase of a popular oral tradition which later flowered ‘into drama, the vernacular short story and the novel. But Pien-wen texts may be transitional, marking a stage between oral and written texts, if thestoryteller was not “reciting” a text (as fixed form) but improvising on a remembered (not memorized) piece of fiction; in this case the pien (“transformation”) would mean “performance” and pien-wen the “recording” of that performance. Here I attempt to show that the orally transmitted performance in four pienwen stories is the result of a dialogue between the story-teller and his culture-, history- and situation-specific audience, and thus that these stories studied carefully together can reveal an alternative reality to that represented in/by the existing literary canon.

This paper discusses the nature of allegorization (the projection of inward qualities of personality or states of consciousness into external. symbols or transcendent ideals) and allegoresis (textual commentary upon allegory) by comparing the “journey into cave” (inward journey) theme in three works: The Faerie Queene, Don Quixote and the Hsi Yu Pu. All these caves finally resemble Plato’s cave of ignorance and illusion, the “darkness of the soul,” and all three heros’ quests show that man can, by learning to transcend past limitations, move out of the world of illusion into a higher reality.