During the last classes we have been
working in the topics of Phenomenology and Hermeneutics. First of all, it is
important to know that in phenomenology the important matter is the relation
between phenomena and consciousness, all factors like the historical context,
conditions of production and all external facts of the literary text are not
taken into account. Moreover, it is focus on the conscious of the author that
is manifested through the work itself, and the reader experience not only the
stylistic and the semantic aspects that are given by the text, but also it is
concerned with the deep structures that are impregnated by the world perception
of the author. Furthermore, Hermeneutics is very similar to phenomenology but
focusing in historical interpretation.
Then, the second topic that we
were working on was the reader response criticism. Which states that all the
believes and experiences of the reader cannot be omitted from the literature,
and taking that into account it analyzes how is the reader response when he or
she reads the text. It has different
categories or kinds of reader response. Some of them focus on the meaning which
is created through the relation between the text and the reader, other focuses
more in the cognitive process that the reader has when he is reading each part
of the text. Another focuses in that there is not text, but the text is created
by the reader response to it. Other kind of reader response is centered in what
the readers’ responses reveal about themselves. And the last one states that
there is not a subjective response but just social conventions created by
interpretative communities. But as a conclusion of this paragraph, there is not
possible separation of all the experiences, and all what we are from the text
that we are reading and how we see and understand it.
References:
Tyson, L.
(2006). Reader Response Criticism, In Critical Theory Today. (pp. 169-208).
Routledge. New York.
Eagleton,
T. (1996).Phenomenology, Hermeneutics,
Reception Theory. In Literary Theory (pp. 47-78). Oxford: Blackwell publishing.
