From Receiving Meaning To Constructing Meaning: An Analytical Historical of the Reader's Role in the Literary Work

Abstract

The study of the connection between the reader and the meaning of the literary text developed throughout the ages, and critics went in different directions in their analysis of the nature of that connection as well as the reader’s role on the literary text. In this context, the proposed study traces this relationship’s development to analyze the following: (1) the role played by the German Constance School in transforming the reader’s role from being a consumer reader to become a participant in the construction of meaning, and to highlight the procedures used by the founders of this school to facilitate understanding the reader’s new role. (2) the study sheds light on the way in which the critic Murād Mabrūk in his theory about “the literary communication” conveyed the concepts of the Constance School about the reader’s role in producing meaning to open up a new horizon for studying the meaning of the literary text. The study concludes, through its use of the historical analytic method, that: (1) the historical development of the mechanism of interpretation of meaning is based on the idea of the shift in interaction with meaning from the negative interaction in which the meaning is a constant element discovered by the reader to the positive interaction in which the meaning is a variable element resulting from the interaction between the text, Author, and reader.