SOURCE: O'Shaughnessy, Toni. “‘An Imperfect Tale’: Interpretive Accountability in Wieland.” Studies in American Fiction 18, no. 1 (spring 1990): 41-54.

In the following essay, O'Shaughnessy examines the deliberate manipulation of readers' interpretive responses to events in the plot of Wieland.

In the “Epistle to the Reader,” which prefaces his Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690), John Locke describes his own authorship in ambiguous and suggestive language. Authors, he says, are those “who let loose their own Thoughts,” as hunters release hounds or hawks, “and follow them in writing.”¹ The understanding searches for “Truth” like a dog after “Quarry,” making new and temporarily delightful discoveries. Although the possibility of final apprehension of truth is always apparently assumed in Locke's discussion, in fact Locke's hunter “cannot much boast of any great Acquisition.” Truth is never finally caught. This is not, however, a significant problem for Locke, since “the very pursuit makes a great part of...