Connotations 18.1-3 (2008/2009)

46
DAVID FISHELOV
lumped together as “explication” (Beardsley) or “gap-filling” (Perry and Sternberg).
Note also that, whereas gap-filling is an activity necessary for the reader to
make sense of the story, to become aware of possibilities suggested by a text is an
optional activity: a reader can basically make sense of a story without imagining
some of its suggested potentialities.
5
For the tradition of Christian interpretations of the biblical story of Samson, see
Michael Krouse, Milton’s Samson and the Christian Tradition (New Jersey: Princeton
UP, 1949), and my Samson’s Locks: The Transformations of Biblical Samson (Haifa and
Tel Aviv: Haifa UP, 2000) 158-74.
6
Whereas life and death are contradictory terms (if you’re not alive, you’re dead;
you cannot be neither alive nor dead), black and white are contrary terms (something
can be neither black nor white). For a systematic presentation of these
logical relations, see John Lyons, Semantics (Cambridge: CUP, 1977) 270-80; 772-
73.
7
In such an empirical test we should try, of course, to neutralize as much as
possible contextual features not actually suggested by the story. Furthermore, it is
reasonable to assume that the results of such a procedure would be clearer and
(statistically) significant when subjects would face coherent narratives and note,
say, post-modern texts that frustrates the reader‘s expectations on every textual
turn.
8
Note that suggested elements that the author has ‘bypassed’ are not necessarily
valuable: an author may have studiously avoided some suggested elements
because they are clichés (which are later adopted in a popular filmic adaptation).
9
This addition cannot be explained by certain generic conventions of the discussed
three works; there are other plays, novels and movies based on the biblical
story of Samson that do not include this specific scene (see my Samson’s Locks,
note 5).
10
Quotations are from John Milton, Paradise Regained, the Minor Poems and Samson
Agonistes, ed. Herritt Y. Hughes (Indianapolis: The Odyssey P, 1937). Following
each quote, line numbers are indicated.
11
Milton’s description of Delilah-as-a-ship is partly modelled on Enobarbus’s
literal description of Cleopatra’s barge in Antony and Cleopatra, see The Riverside
Shakespeare, ed. G. Blakemore Evans (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1974) 1343-91
(II.ii.190-225).
12
Note also the irony directed here towards Delilah: her flamboyant show is
utterly inappropriate and futile considering that Samson is blind.
13
Ze’ev (Vladimir) Jabotinsky, Samson, trans. Cyrus Brooks (New York: Judea
Publishing Company, 1986 [1927, in Russian]). Page numbers will be indicated in
parentheses after citations from this edition.
14
Forshey attributes DeMille’s decision to redeem Delilah to the “need for film
heroines to be saved from their wicked ways”; see Gerald E. Forshey, American
Religious and Biblical Spectaculars (Westport, Coon: Praeger, 1992) 62.