Hermeneutics of the Crossroads

The main question posed in my thesis is whether or not the crossroads is a paradigm that might open the event of reading and interpretation. I believe this profound place of possibility is a valid intellectual model for innovative and uninhabited modes of understanding. The hermeneutics of the crossroads is an imaginative approach that keeps us open to the transformative power of literature transpiring when we bring to the text our working scholarly knowledge, but also allow ourselves to receive what it has to offer us. Using the crossroads theory of surrendering and receiving, I have interpreted Gayl Jones\u27s novel, Corregidora, in this spirit. In Chapter 1, I briefly examine historical aspects in Blues creation and evolution, and how this relates to Jones\u27s novel. Chapter 2, I perform my hermeneutical interpretive posture. And finally, in Chapter 3, I place myself in the center of possibility within Hoodoo culture, in order to personally discover how this revered, yet often overlooked, culture speaks to and through Blues, literature, and the crossroads