The Role of Beliefs in Understanding and Appreciating Poetry

FAIN: FR-10342-78

Robert H. Vorsteg
Davidson County Community College (Lexington, NC 27293-1287)

To study the role which our antecedent beliefs play in our understanding and appreciation of poetry, utilizing recent work in the philosophy of language. The dependence of understanding upon belief can be further developed by considering the notion of the pragmatic presuppositions of a speaker. That is, roughly, the set of beliefs which the speaker takes for granted and which he assumes his audience takes for granted.