Canciones entre el alma y el esposo of Juan de la Cruz : a hermeneutical interpretation.

This dissertation presents a hermeneutical framework within which an interpretation of Juan de la Cruz's Cantico may be undertaken. I call this framework a Global Hermeneutical Method. The phenomenological hermeneutics of Paul Ricoeur are used to construct this framework. Ricoeur's phenomenological hermeneutics of texts is based on a theory of mimesis. In following the hermeneutical arc constructed in the pre-understanding of the Cantico (mimesis$\sb1$), its configuration (mimesis$\sb2$), and then its reconfiguration (mimesis$\sb3),$ a number of significant methodological issues for the interpretation of Juan's Cantico are reflected upon. These are examined to show how Juan's poem can be meaningfully interpreted for the contemporary reader, culturally and historically removed from sixteenth-century Spain. In a particular way this dissertation examines the split-reference of metaphorical discourse which accounts for the legitimation of the noetic content of the Cantico as well as the emergence of new meaning. The dogmatic content of the Cantico can therefore be accounted for without excluding the possibility of new readings of the Cantico. Metaphor, which uses ordinary language to construct linguistic models of reality, is seen as the tool, par excellence, which produced the what-is-not-yet in the world. A hermeneutical interpretation of Juan's Cantico helps us understand the originality of the text of the Cantico, even though, intertextually, the Cantico interacts with the Song of Songs, as well as other texts, in the production of meaning. The hermeneutical interpretation of Juan's Cantico suggests that neither Cantico A nor Cantico B be given priority in interpretation. Each of these two texts constructs its own meaning since the dramatic structure of each is different. The suggestion that CA be considered the poetic text, while CB be considered the theological text, becomes irrelevant in this approach. Both texts are unique poetic texts which open up unique text-worlds as is suggested by the difference in the dramatic structure of each text. There is also the possibility that the original poem, which I refer to as Cantico O, may also construct a different world-of-the-text than either CA or CB. Although I outline an analysis of the dramatic structure of each of these three texts, I suggest that a more thorough structural analysis needs to be done in order to surface more clearly the unique text-world which each constructs. The poetry-prose relationship is reassessed within the hermeneutical approach to Juan's Cantico. Poetic discourse (the poem) and speculative discourse (the commentary) are two radically different forms of discourse. The Cantico is, therefore, freed from an overdependence on the commentary which tends to interpret the poem allegorically. (Abstract shortened by UMI.