Two Problems in Textual Interpretation

Abstract

The two sections below are two further elaborations of the theory of the interpretation of narrative texts presented in The Role of the Reader (1979a) and then developed further in Lector in Fabula (1979b). For the convenience of the reader, I am presenting here the table of levels of textual cooperation published in Eco 1979a, p. 14. In the box on discursive structures I did not sufficiently develop the voice chosen of the isotopies, since the concept of isotopy was there understood as used in Greimas' semiotics. As to the deeper intensional levels, in The Role of the Reader I have developed only a few aspects of the question since my major interest was in the interpretation of the narrative level (fabula) and in the extensional inferences (= possible worlds). In the two following sections I shall deal explicitly with isotopies and with some problems concerning the intensional interpretation of deep textural structures.

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