Summary: Umberto Eco, The Role of the Reader
Editor’s Note: For this assignment, I needed to read and summarize the published piece or content listed below, and then provide a response or assessment of the writing.
Summary
Eco explains that a work of literature cannot be a method of communication unless the addressee/reader is considered when the addresser/author is writing the literature. He believes that understanding Jakobson’s model of communication is integral to any successful communication in any form. He then proposes an expanded and modified communication model to represent a semantico-pragmatic process. In this process, the author must consider the options of how a possible reader, or a Model Reader, may receive the text because their codes of interpretation may be different than what the author intended. Eco redefines author as a textual strategy whose goal is to activate the Model Reader and states that every piece of art is both open for multiple interpretations and a closed performance completed by the end user. He offers examples of how an author can create work and leave it open to multiple interpretations, but all of those interpretations are a result of the author’s work and the parameters they set forth, so unlimited interpretations is not plausible. Eco believes that this indeterminacy in a work allows end users to explain the work in their terms and offer a new way of looking at the work, but those end users never exhaust the work; rather, they each complete the work individually. Eco uses the example of Superman and the author’s ability to elicit a sense of self-identification between the text and the reader through consuming Superman’s alter ego Clark Kent and his continually predictable human experiences and mortality even though Superman is a mythical being who encounters obstacles the average human would never endure. The reader’s hunger for redundancy allows the iterative plot to continue to be accepted by the reader while simultaneously imposing a sense of order on the author.
Response
Eco’s emphasis on the author creating a work of art that is open to completion by every individual end user (e.g., reader, performer, etc.) was one of the points of his chapters that I found most interesting. If you consider a literary text, it seems to me that most authors create their text with a definitive purpose or message in mind. I’m not sure that many authors consider their readers beyond contemplating what gaps they must fill for their readers in order to ensure that their readers understand and comprehend the message that the author is trying to relay. I could be completely off base here, but I’ve never read a literary work and thought, ‘Wow, it’s clear that the author purposefully and intentionally set up this story to be open to multiple interpretations.’ Perhaps some authors do write with indeterminancy in mind, but I can’t think of an example. On the other hand, perhaps authors do consider their readers’ backgrounds for purposes that go beyond filling in gaps to ensure their message is received and understood. If an author’s goal is to produce a piece of literature that is a mass market success, that author would definitely have to create literature that was crafted for all people of all backgrounds, rather than a limited group or groups of people. In that case, it would have to be a human market, rather than a segmented identity-based market.
The other aspect of this point that I thought was interesting was that it seems as though it undermines the idea of literary theory and criticism and, instead, gives all the power of interpretation to the reader. Even if the interpretation realm of individual readers is not limitless (according to Eco), the idea of one, or even a few, interpretation through the lens of any one theory is pretty much rendered null and void unless an individual reader chooses to view the literature through that lens. I think this brings me back to the idea of reader-response criticism being injected into all theories to a degree. There could be multiple interpretations of the same literary piece through any one specific literary lens, and all of those interpretations would be a result of the individual who is producing the interpretation. All of those individuals would all be influenced by their background and personal, cultural, political, social, and environmental influences. These influential factors would allow them to complete the literary piece individually, but complete it using a specific literary lens. In this context, it’s easy for me to understand why reader-response criticism is all but extinct with literary critics. In fact, it seems odd that it was even initially considered and given merit by certain scholars. I guess if someone approached a literary work with the intention of interpreting it strictly from the perspective of a specific interpretative community, that analysis could be valuable; however, that, too, would present problems if the interpreter was not representative of the interpretative community or was not viewed as representative of that community.