Traces of/in the text

The author describes and critically reflects on some features of the discussions concerning the relation between the text and its interpretation that have been held mainly in the USA since the 1960s. The core of the essay is a critical evaluation of some theories of Stanley Fish (1938). Fish's insights are seen against the background of the more traditional - "formalist" and "new critical" models of interpretation. The author poses the question to what extend can the text and its meaning be conceived as something objectively given and to what extend should they, on the other hand, be seen as products of culturally or institutionally based interpretive strategies. The first two chapters look at two attempts at challenging the "new-critical" method of analysis according to which the exclusive object of critical attention should be the text itself. The first attempt (S. Fish) consists in turning the attention of the critic from the text towards the reader and her consciousness. The author sees this theory as problematic owing to the fact that the experience of the reader who reads in the way suggested by Fish will always be to a great extend a product of Fish's method. The description of her reading experience would then be no more than a description of one specific mode of reading. The second attempt (E.D...