From the chapter “Literature, Meaning, and Interpretation”, one of the ideas that strikes me as interesting regarding the relationship between language and meaning is the method of reading literature works, which is the combination of poetics and hermeneutics. The author made the concepts of these two methods clear to us. The poetics is based on the attested meaning and aims to find out what have to be accounted and how the meaning is achieved. However, hermeneutics is based on the forms of the literature works and aims to discover new and better interpretation of the it. Poetics and hermeneutics are often combined to read literature works. I believe reading literature works by both of these methods is important and helpful for us to grasp and discover the meaning that we find in the literature works. Only when we know how the attested meaning is achieved by learning every part of the literature work will we have a better understanding of this, which I think is the basis of seeking to discover the new interpretation. Just like our annotations assignments, we read the poems, note what this part or that part is talking about and grasp what the author wants to deliver. After we have a basic understanding of this, we can read the poems again and try to think deeply.

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