Philosophy, Poetry, and the Principle of Charity

Abstract

In this chapter, the author draws on the philosophy of language, and particularly the idea of radical interpretation , to argue that understanding any words spoken by another requires enormous assumptions. She argues that modern poetry's famed indeterminacy is a surface phenomenon. The author's key terms—indeterminacy, imagery, and experiment—are drawn from literary studies and are central to the study of poetics, particularly modern American poetics. She presents a very brief account of the strands of philosophical thinking that Davidson draws upon to develop his theory. The principle of charity is what's so radical about interpretation. The author focuses on the close analysis of poems by William Carlos Williams, Emily Dickinson, John Ashbery, and Susan Howe. William Carlos Williams's poem is plainspoken, almost prose-like, especially if one hears it read aloud without concern for line and stanza breaks. The difficulty of interpretation is one of the subjects of “Wet Casements.”