The summary before Winthrop's sermon allows us some additional insight into his personality. One thing I found quite interesting as his interpretations of seemingly typical occurances as acts of God. For example, he believed it to be god's hand when a neighbor saw a house on fire and "saved all." His interpretation of these "godly acts" seem to get progressivly more ridiculous. When a common prayer book was eaten by mice he believed that to be a sign from god that he did not promote this type of worship. I understand that Winthrop was an extremley religious man but this seems boarderline ludacris to me.
I've seen similar occurances in many other situations, not just religiously. Take someone reading a poem for example. "The word shining may represent the importance of the sun and therefore nature in the author's life... The poet was raised in the countryside and this may be a reference to the sunrises during his childhood..." OR it may just mean that the object was shining. I think most would agree that anything overanalyzed, be it a tone of voice or a line in a novel. My question then is, how much interpretation is to much? It would obviously be dependant on the situation, as is just about anything, but is there a way to know when you are truly reading to far into things? Also, I've been wondering if this overanalysis that virtually everyone has at one time succumb to can be dangerous. It seems to me like it's this kind of thinking that could lead to someone being condemend as a witch for say, being able to swim, or reading too much. If overanalyzing is dangerous, is there a solution? I know this is many questions in a row and probably has no succinct answer but I'm still interested to hear your thoughts.
Molly Dunbar
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Well, everyone can have a different interpretation of the same event, and what seems as "overinterpretation" to you may actually seem reasonable to someone else. From Winthrop's perspective, it wouldn't be unusual for God to intervene in daily life to send signals and signs to him. Similarly, the Greeks would use omens such as flying birds to predict the future. Interpretation is what happens when we try to match our intensional maps to the extensional world, and because Winthrop had such a strong religious background, it's reasonable that he actually believed in his "omens."
You also wondered about analysis and interpretation in literature. Well, I believe that literature usually does have numerous layers, and that many times something that appears to be simple at one layer actually has a different, deeper meaning. Of course, that meaning may be apparent only to some people, considering that each of us has a different intensional mindset.
I agree with Eric that there are many different opinions about whether something is being over interpretative. However, at the same time, I think that when an interpretation is considered absolutely ludicrous by a majority of people, something is obviously not right, whether it be with the people or with the interpretation itself. Regardless, the only way that I can think of of preventing over interpretation is to convince the interpreter that they are over interpreting. However, at that point, it may be very hard to accomplish that.
Whenever I think of analysis, I am reminded of Ms. Lipinsky's Honors English during freshman year. Being the extremely intelligent woman that she is, she was able to interpret any literary allusion, device, etc., in an instant. Her binders/papers of "interpretation" outnumbered the number of pages in the actual written works.
I'd say, quite practically, that overanalysis becomes overkill when it leads to something harmful. If Winthrop had suggested that the mice's feeding on the pages of the prayer book meant that innocent vistims had to be hung immediately, then we would regard his chain of thought as something ridiculous. His interpretation, however, did not hurt a soul; quite oppositely, his observation pleased the other religious members of his Puritan community. A better understanding of their faith brought them closer to salvation.
In such a Puritan case, I doubt that there would be a solution considering the rigidity of Puritan doctrine. In a flexible world like ours, harmful overanalysis may be halted before spreading disastrously.
(Sam Maliha)
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