The Dilemma of Literary Interpretation: Exploring Different Receptions of Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God by the 20th Century African American Critics

Abstract

All over the time readings of the same literary work differ unexpectedly. Sometimes critics and readers fall in sharp oppositions concerning a text’s meaning. Zora Neale Hurston’s African-American novel Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937) can best exemplify this tension between literary studies. This research seeks not to judge about which interpretation is more valid, but to understand why such contradictions between readings of the same text occur at all. To this end, it seeks to form an understanding about the perspective(s) of literary criticism in literature, its origination and development in order to spot the reason(s) responsible for their diversity. After that, it moves to practically analyze how the results work their way through a text interpretation, taking the 20th century African-American critics of Their Eyes as a sample of the study