On Interpretation: Studies in Culture, Law, and the Sacred

Founded as a journal but now evolving into a book series, Graven Images illuminates culture, the law, and the human urge for transcendence.

Graven Images 5: On Interpretation looks past post-structuralist theory to re-examine methods of textual interpretation developed in past millennia to understand sacred, philosophical, cultural, legal, literary, and artistic texts.

The thirty-two contributors include such noted scriptural interpreters as Robert Alter and Bernard Levinson, philosophers Lenn Goodman and David Novak, cultural historians Marcia Colish and David Steinmetz, legal scholars Gordon Baldwin and Mark Tushnet, literary analysts Lee Johnson and Eric Rothstein, and scholars whose analyses transcend single categories or periods, including Brayton Polka and Jane Tylus. In addition, seven poets offer their interpretations of prophecy, art, and human nature. Of special interest is a verse cycle by the noted poet Mary Kinzie inspired by an earlier essay in Graven Images 3 on Albrecht Dürer's Melancholia.