‘Quotation analysis’ as a means of understanding comprehension processes of longer and more difficult texts

Abstract

This paper explores why certain sections in the literary classic Gulliver's Travels are quoted from and interpreted more frequently and extensively than others. It asks in which ways such a ‘quotation analysis’ can help to increase our knowledge about literary understanding, especially that of longer and notoriously difficult texts. It was found that quotations in 74 interpretations of Gulliver's Travels were concentrated in a few passages of the book which were often used to extract and ‘prove’ assertions about the structure, topic and overall meaning of the text. On the other hand the same passages were also often considered as especially ‘problematic’ for various reasons. The characteristic concentration of quotations in professional interpretations on a textual core could be accounted for using a text comprehension model (as developed by Van Dijk and Kintsch), while the observed quotational and interpretative concentration on ‘difficult’ passages or ‘blind spots’ shows clearly both the causes for, and the range of, various possible understandings of a literary text (i.e. its ‘polyvalence’ in terms of the Empirical Science of Literature (Schmidt (1980)). Therefore ‘quotation analysis’ is recommended as a partially empirical and partially hermeneutical method for explaining which sections of Gulliver's Travels readers have quoted, and for predicting which sections will arouse most interest and critical debate in the future. These results should not only be helpful in the teaching of literature, but - on a more general level - ‘quotation analysis’ helps to understand how we choose what we quote from (literary) texts, it illuminates the semantic and structural makeup of ‘classical’ texts, and gives us insight into our understanding of texts.