A Comparative Study of Basic Text Worlds in Two Short Stories: Ernest Hemingway’s Old Man at the Bridge and James M. Cain’s Brush Fire.

Abstract

Ever since literary criticism emerged as a formal discipline in the 1920s, competing theories, drawn from political, racial, gender, and sexual orientation have wrestled with each other over the interpretation of works of literature. Not to be outdone, linguists, initially in the form of structuralists, schooled in the theories of Saussure, strove towards an objective assessment of the truth and meaning. Their mantle was passed to more formal competing linguists: the stylisticians, and, more recently, cognitive linguists have turned their attention to how readers interpret texts and comprehend meaning. Linguist Paul Werth’s theories of interpretation and comprehension, known as text worlds, were published posthumously at the turn of the millennium. This article examines aspects of his theory in regard to its application to two short stories published in 1930s America.