english/linguist lovers
 

I have to write a paper on Jonathan Culler's Literary Competence explaining why the chapter "literary Competence" is worthy of surviving the book it was published in. Here's a brief outline of what his thesis is and why he thinks it's important... i'm just wondering how this can be useful to today's readers and writers. any info here would be appreciated.

Joan Baptiste Jonathan Culler, "Literary Competence"
Thesis:
A reader can phonetically and structurally understand a sentence but must posess an internal literary knowledge in order to interpret liturature on its artistic level.
Main Points:
*(918) explanation of literary competence; "He has not internalized the 'grammar' of liturature which would permit him to convert linguistic sequences into literary structures and meanings."
*(919) The semiological approach suggests, rather, that the poem be thought of as an utterance that has meaning only with respect to a system of conventions which the reader has assimilated.
*(920) "To write a poem or a novel is immediately to engage with a literary traditionor at the very least with a certain idea of the poem or the novel. The activity is made possible by the existence of genre..." -"promise" example
*(920) "Even if the author does not think of readers, he is himself a reader of his own work and will not be satisfied with it unless he can read it as producing effects." -"p & q" example
*(921) "The task is rather to construct a theory of literary discourse which would account for the possibilities of interpretation, the 'empty meanings' which support a variety of full meanings but which do not permit the work to be given just any meaning."
Definitions:
semantic-
the study of the development and changes of the meanings of words
semiological-
art of using in signaling or in expressing thought
hermeneutic-
unfolding the significance; interpretative
taxonomy-
classification (esp. plants and animals)