Abstract
The aim of the paper is to present intentio operis as an interpretative strategy created by a text. According to Umberto Eco, this strategy can help to transcend the opposition between intentio auctoris and the interpreter’s unrestrained freedom. Although as a concept intentio operis belongs to literary texts, it seems to be an interesting construct to apply to legal interpretation, especially because it links different points of view on textual interpretation: the structural (‘how the text is constructed’) and the pragmatic (namely aspects of communication, such as the communicative intentions of the empirical author, the communicative intentions of the text).
Highlights
INTRODUCTORY REMARKSThe aim of the article is to present the concept of intentio operis, which was developed by Umberto Eco for considering intention in the interpretation of literary texts
According to Eco, every author presupposes the existence of a model of their hypothetical reader, whose task is to closely cooperate with the author in the process of textual interpretation
Eco rejects the privileged position of the intention of the author and instead introduces the Model Author as a communicative textual strategy that determines the interpretive process for the reader
Summary
The aim of the article is to present the concept of intentio operis, which was developed by Umberto Eco for considering intention in the interpretation of literary texts. In the way Eco understands it, intentio operis is meant to function as a form of restraint on the interpreter’s far-reaching inclinations regarding the text. It is paradoxically, a certain way of revealing the author’s intentions. I have already presented possible applications of some of the solutions proposed by Eco that bring the ‘derivational’ and pragmalinguistic approaches to legal interpretation closer together.[4] In this article, I present Eco’s deployment of intentio operis as an attempt to transcend the opposition between authorial intention and interpretive freedom, with the hope that this will prove beneficial to legal interpretation
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