DECODING THE TEXT AND THE ‘POWER’ OF THE READER
Keywords:
phenomenology, intentional objects, historical situatedness, reception theoryAbstract
The process of interpretation and understanding of a literary text has always been thought of as an exercise controlled by either the text or the author. The reader has been given a peripheral role in the process of producing meaning. The recent emphasis on the reader as a very important entity, not just a ‘tabula rasa’ (Locke, 1996) gathers its strength from the new perspective in which the reading process is viewed. The philosophical notions developed by Edmund Husserl and Roman Ingarden, and the phenomenological theories of Schleiermacher and Don Ihde have paved way for the elevation of the reader to the position of the most important agent shaping and directing the process of decoding the meaning of a text. Literary theories proposed by Roman Ingarden, Hans Robert Jauss, Wolfgang Iser, Stanley Fish has brought the reader to the center stage. The gamut of ideas offered by these new groups of theoreticians has redefined the role of the text from an independent object into something that can only exist when it is read and when it interacts with the mind of the reader. This study describes how the philosophical notions combined with literary ideologies help the reader to emerge as the most powerful agent in the realization of the meaning of texts.
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