Review article
https://doi.org/10.29162/ANAFORA.v7i2.9
The Rights of the Text. Unlimited Semiosis and Limits of Interpretation – Tracing Umberto Eco’s Semiotics
Ružica Pšihistal
orcid.org/0000-0002-7018-6328
; Josip Juraj Strossmayer University of Osijek Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Osijek, Croatia
Abstract
Eco opened the door to the reader already in the pre-semiotic phase (Opera aperta, 1962), and then through the title (Lector in fabula, 1979) he positioned the reader in the very center of the “story” about the semiotics of literature. In taking over Peirce’s concept of unlimited semiosis as the key to the semiotic openness of the text that offers a potentially unlimited number of interpretive attempts in the expansion of meaning,Eco is almost scrupulously concerned about misinterpretations of semiosis. His persistent advocacy of a collaborative relationship between the reader and the text is increasingly taking the form of an apologetic advocacy for the rights of the text and the necessity of delineating the minimum limits of interpretation (The Limits of Interpretation,1990). As Eco taught, the potentially limitless semiosis does not lead to the absolute reader freedom, it does not mean that interpretation has no criteria and that all interpretations have a happy ending. It was a silent voice. The exponential growth of readers’ “rights” and “freedoms” was unstoppable in poststructuralism. This study poses the questions as to why deconstruction and gender studies, as examples of exclusive perspectives (radical openness of the text left to limitless semiosis / radical closedness of the text that has only a predetermined meaning), are violations of the collaborative attitude toward the text and whether we can find in Eco’s interpretive semiotics the epistemological and methodological foundations for the protection or environmental sustainability of the text.
Keywords
Umberto Eco, literary semiotics, semiosis, open text, limits of interpretation
Hrčak ID:
250587
URI
Publication date:
30.12.2020.
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