Let us shout it from the rooftops: Literature provides a space so rich with possibilities because it is able to offer much more than expression or revelation. The text, like illusion and representation, is but a mere façade concealing a subtext that begs to be discovered. The explicit part is only the tip of the iceberg, as the unfathomable unspoken element brims with messages brought to the surface by the reader’s interpretation. On the whole, there are two ways of reading: “one, naïve and innocent, ‘in the first degree’, as we sometimes say; the other fierce and critical.” It would therefore be convenient to leave it at “this tension between the state of rapture and the delights of critical attention [which] is the very lifeblood of reading.” 1At the level of discursive structure the reader is invited to fill up various empty phrastic spaces (texts are lazy machineries that ask someone to do part of their job). At the level of narrative structures, the reader is supposed to make forecasts concerning the future course of the fabula. … Every text … is in some way making the addressee expect (and foresee) the fulfilment of every unaccompanied sentence …—Umberto Eco
There are, in general, two types of readers: the professional reader, and the non-professional reader. I intend to categorize as “professional reader” (Umberto Eco speaks of the “Model Reader,” the one who “wants to know how the story has been told” 2 ) anyone under an obligation to read, whether in an institutional or professional context. This may include journalists, booksellers, librarians, literary critics, editors, proofreaders, teachers, or students required to study a work. Professional readers fulfill their duty because it is required. For them, reading does not constitute diversion (as understood by French philosopher Pascal) and may well be demanding. It should be noted that the reading habits of professional readers present constraints, although there are some compensations. These people are not always permitted to choose their reading, for example, which exempts them from the influence of socio-economic factors; reading is not in competition with other forms of entertainment (such as films, games, and sport). Another constraint is that professional readers have no choice but to make themselves available for this exercise but, seen from another angle, since this reading does not have to compete with their other pursuits, it will never be put off on the grounds that these readers cannot find the time to read. The professional reader, even if forced to read at a more demanding level, retains some flexibility in unraveling the text, such as questioning the text further in order to explore the range of effects. In this space of freedom, the reader
Meanwhile, non-professional readers (whom Eco would qualify as “semantic” in On Literature, as those who only “want to know what happens”) 4 are influenced by socio-economic factors (i.e., they can choose to see the film adaptation of a literary work rather than read it), and by the time that they wish to devote to reading. Those who read on public transport, for example, might prefer shorter narratives. And if recreation is the goal, such as reading on the beach, lighter content will be favored. Even if confining oneself to a semantic reading, the non-professional reader—cousin of Eco’s “empirical reader”—has complete latitude in approaching the text: “Empirical readers can read in many ways, and there is no law that tells them how to read, because they often use the text as a container for their own passions, which may come from outside the text, or which the text may arouse by chance.” 5 While presenting a sociology of reading is outside my current aims, it can be shown precisely at what point certain observations must be qualified, such as those by Daniel Pennac in his book Reads Like a Novel. Pennac believes that “Man … reads because he knows he’s alone. His reading keeps him company, but without replacing any other; rather, no other company can take its place.” 6 Beyond this metaphysical dimension that would only apply to the non-professional reader, there are many other ways to justify “this act of permanent creation.” 7… decides whether the text has two or more levels of meaning, whether it’s worth looking for an allegorical sense, or whether the tale is also saying something about the reader—and whether these different senses blend together in a solid and harmonious form, or whether they can float about independent of one another. 3
I will focus here on the professional reader only. In his preface to the French edition of Hans Robert Jauss’ book, Pour une esthétique de la réception (published in English as Towards an Aesthetic of Reception), Starobinski unintentionally gives a perfect definition of the literary critic, who can be seen as the most accomplished of readers:
We can essentially map professional reading by distinguishing three ways of “creating.” A bird’s eye view will confirm that one can take an interest by turns in, first, the text (writing-oriented); second, the author (writer-oriented); and third, the reader (reader-oriented). The fact that many literary theories have privileged one exclusive approach is regrettable for several reasons, but we do need to recognize that their legacy is invaluable.The reader is therefore at once, or by turns, the one who occupies the role of receiver, of discriminator (in the sense of the basic critical function of accepting or rejecting), and in some cases the producer, imitating or, arguably, reinterpreting an existing work. 8
Among the theories that developed around the text in the first half of the twentieth century, in Europe, there was Genetic Criticism 9 which focused its attention on the pretext (namely, the historicity of the literary material); socio-criticism, which gives the text a socialization value, in establishing a strong relationship between society and the literary work; and then, the formalist method with its fervent proponents such as Victor Schklovsky and Roman Jakobsen. Strongly inspired by linguistics, the Russian formalists devoted themselves to rendering intelligible the literary material by examining its “literariness,” 10 and by emphasizing its “internal laws” that governed the development of the work. Later, in the 1950s, genre theory, eminently represented by Northrop Frye, 11 stylistics, poetics, semiotics, narratology, and New Criticism (and structuralism, deconstruction, and post-structuralism) concerned themselves only with the actual text, usually considered as an autonomous, closed space. In the early 1980s, Jean Bellemin-Noël conceived his groundbreaking textual analysis, granting each text its own unconscious, no hypallage intended!
Then along came the currents of literary criticism that swirled around the figure of the author: The critique of consciousness (with adherents such as Jean Rousset and Jean Starobinski), focusing on the writing subject, while psychocriticism had as its raison d’être the exploration of the author’s unconscious.
And finally, in answer to New Criticism, reader-response theory reserved the best role for readers, out of faith in their capacity to transform the text. This theory, attributed in Anglophone scholarship to Stanley Fish and Wolfgang Iser, is midway between “non-Marxist sociology of literature” 12 and poetics. It fell mainly to Wolfgang Iser and Hans Robert Jauss, from the “Constance School” 13 to develop an aesthetic of reception (Rezeption-Aesthetik), especially from 1967, when Jauss outlined the basic principles. These principles established “a distinction between the effect (Wirkung), determined by the work, maintaining links with the past in which the work originated, and with its reception which depends on the free, active recipient, judging according to the aesthetic norms of the time, modifying the terms of the dialogue by his own existence …” 14
Clearly, all these methods of critical analysis, involving a desire to establish a literary science, did not encourage the staging of a confrontation of different approaches. But to have a wider perspective, it would have been absolutely necessary to be equally interested in the three modes of perceiving writing: taking into account the past (focusing on the author, the source of the text), the present (discovering the text in question), and the future (highlighting the text’s potential, which will in time be revealed by a multiplicity of readings).
We must now turn to focus on the reader who brings the text to life by creating meaning. We can safely say that a literary text is a linguistic construct resulting from a mental structure that resists, represents, or enriches reality. Unlike a treasure awaiting discovery by an explorer, the text expects no revelation from the reader. Neither does the author endeavor to encode his text, as Dan Brown does, for example, so that the meaning will only be perceptive to the cl...