Decoding the Text and the 'Power' of the Reader

ABSTRACTThe 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.Keywords: phenomenology, intentional objects, historical situatedness, reception theory.INTRODUCTION:The long history of the theory of literature, from Plato to the present, is mainly centered on 'reading' and on the debate of deciding the most dominant factor that controls, decides and shapes the reading process. The history of theory records certain well known shifts of emphasis in this relation. Although there have been found different factors dominating this kind of shift of emphasis in different ages, they have been similar in their central propaganda, that is, each of them claims to have control over the reading process and this determines the outcome of reading. One can visualize a little scene on a darkened stage, with the persona of the author on one side, the reader on the other and the text placed between them. The spot light in this drama focuses on only one entity at a time and the light foregrounds one of them so brightly that the others fade into practical invisibility. Thus the focused element, whether the author or the text or the reader, has always been deemed to be the main controller of the 'reading' of the text.Throughout the centuries, it becomes apparent, usually either the book or the author has been conceived as the guide to the reading process. The reader has tended to remain in shadow, taken for granted. Here or there, a theoretician may start to take the reader seriously when he or she discusses the reading of the literary text and its consequences. Yet, until recently, the reader has never been considered as the main component of the reading process. 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.LITERATURE REVIEW:The existence of a single and already defined meaning incorporated in a literary text has been critically evaluated by several studies over the past few decades. In a sharp contrast to the already assumed notion of the author or the text functioning together to shape the meaning, recent studies have shown that every reader is the source of his or her interpretation of a text and this meaning is a product of the transaction of his or her personal associations with the text. The earliest trace of a study proposing the existence of a text dependent on the reader can be found in Louise Rosenblatt's much quoted work Literature as Exploration (Rosenblatt, 1938). In a reaction to the emphasis given on the autonomy of the text by the school of theorists known as New Critics, Rosenblatt (1938) advocated for the participation of the reader's personal predilections in the interpretation of a text. …