Politics of cross-cultural reading : three case studies (Rabindranath Tagore, Tahar Ben Jelloun and Dario Fo)

Abstract

The aim of this thesis is to develop a multifaceted model by which one can engage with cross-cultural acts of reading in a meaningful way and to provide a sample of quite diverse works of world literature in translation to show the model’s flexibility. My methodology combines reception studies (Wolfgang Iser, Hans-Robert Jauss and Peter Rabinowitz) with polysystem theory (Itamar Even-Zohar) and rhetorical hermeneutics (Steven Mailloux). The foundations of meaning are negotiated in a complex interpretive process that involves an act of sense making (understanding) and an act of making-sense-to-others (persuading). Like meaning, authority and authenticity do not reside at one site (“the original” or “the author”) but are distributed among various agents participating in the production and positioning of a literary text. The model developed in chapters 1 and 2 takes into account the text’s location in its producing culture and the agents’ location in theirs.