In his earlier books, Shadows in the Cave (1982) and Phenomenological Hermeneutics and the Study of Literature (1987), Mario Valdes laid the foundation for his phenomenological-hermeneutic approach to literary criticism. With this book he continues the development of his ideas, using his views of literature, cinema, and art to unravel what he calls 'the imaginative configuration of the world, the cultural phenomenon of making sense, poetic sense, of life.'

The book takes the form of a collection of studies dealing with a variety of key issues in literary theory. A...

In Cultural Hermeneutics, Mario J. Valdes offers a synthesis of the hermeneutic philosophies of Miguel de Unamuno and Paul Ricoeur, a dialectical method that has formed the basis for many of Valdes' own studies in comparative literature. As Valdes explains in these insightful essays, what Unamuno and Ricoeur shared in their hermeneutic studies was a theory of interpretation in which the meaning of a work of art comes into existence through the dialectical relationship between its creator and its readers, listeners, or viewers. Contextualizing this hermeneutic concept as it appears...