Acts of Reading: Actual or Virtual Agency?

Abstract

The  aim of this paper is to identify a range of changes, challenges and possibilities that character literary theory, particularly in relation to the meaning-making process. It problematizes a number of reader-response theories, in particular German Wolfgang Iser's 'implied reader' and American Stanley Fish's 'interpretive community' as dominant interpretive frameworks. We intend to raise questions vis-à-vis the degree, kind and scope of agency that the reader is allowed, as well as the pluralistic possibilities of meaning potentially available in texts. The paper, therefore, is a call for opening up fresh avenues of critical discussion; hence, a contribution to present-day debates in contemporary epistemology.