"Casey Rousseau" wrote: > Mmm! See also, Umberto Eco. Four walks in the Fictional Woods, > Interpretation and Overinterpretation and other works. He talsk about a > dialectic between intentio auctoris and intentio lectoris producing > intentio operis. (Forgive me please if I misspelled those, but I think > you gen get the gist. The spellings are spot on, actually. Ah, but it isn't a classic Hegelian dialectic unless the reader's intention is the antithesis of the author's intention... Eco does distinguish between what he calls "open texts", i.e., works of art that actively involve the 'addressee' or reader in their production -- and "closed texts" that try to evoke a limited and predetermined response. In the case of the former, says Eco, the author is consciously trying to evoke a different subjective result with every reader and every performance. Pretty interesting and provocative stuff, regardless of whether you agree with him or not. cheers, Divya ---------- "The question of all questions for humanity, the problem which lies behind all others and is more interesting than any of them is that of the determination of man's place in Nature and his relation to the Cosmos. Whence our race came, what sorts of limits are set to our power over Nature and to Nature's power over us, to what goal we are striving, are the problems which present themselves afresh, with undiminished interest, to every human being born on earth." --T.H. Huxley