| Abstract [eng] |
The master’s thesis examines the public reception of Romualdas Granauskas’ novelette “Jaučio aukojimas” (“The Offering of the Bull”) from its publication in the journal Pergalė in 1973 to the most recent published reception text in 2020. The research material consists of readers’ responses published in Literatūra ir menas, evaluations by literary critics in the periodical press, and scholarly articles by literary researchers discussing the novelette. The study focuses on the relationship between the literary work and its interpretation by identifying the themes most frequently discussed in reception texts, revealing the spectrum of meanings attributed to the work by readers, and analysing the foundations of differing interpretations and their relationship to the text. The theoretical framework is based on the works of Hans Robert Jauss, Stanley Fish, and Umberto Eco. The analysis addresses the following questions: what determines contradictory interpretations of the same literary work; how readers’ interpretative strategies open up the multiplicity of the work’s meanings; and how the text itself provides the basis for different interpretations. The thesis consists of two parts. The theoretical section presents the origins of reception theory and surveys the research approaches relevant to the study: sociological-historical, rhetorical, and semiotic. It introduces Hans Robert Jauss’ concept of the horizon of expectations and argues for the importance of examining the accumulation of earlier reception. Jauss’ concept is supplemented by Stanley Fish’s notion of interpretive communities, explaining how interpretive strategies enable different horizons of expectations to coexist within society at the same time. Finally, Umberto Eco’s semiotic approach to the text is presented together with the notions he developed: the distinction between the empirical and model author/reader and their intentions, reading and textual strategies, and the semantic and semiotic levels of reading. The theoretical works of these authors shape the course of the research. In the second part of the thesis, taking into account Hans Robert Jauss’ discussion of the influence of the horizon of expectations on interpretation, the study demonstrates how the reader’s historical period, literary context, and previous interpretations shape possible reading strategies. In order to highlight how earlier reception influences later reception, the dialogic nature of reception texts is revealed. Selectively drawing on Fish’s ideas, the texts are grouped according to the themes and meanings emphasised by readers, while convergent and contradictory interpretations are identified. Eco’s theoretical framework makes it possible to examine how the formal elements structuring the text determine the interpretation of the work and how the semantic and semiotic levels of reading anticipated by the text generate different meanings. Through analysing the relationship between the reception texts and the literary work, the study identifies the model reader of the novelette, discusses the textual strategies operating within the work, and demonstrates how the reading strategies employed by individual readers allow particular meanings of the text to be actualised. The conclusions state that the literary work offers the possibility of multiple meanings, while readers, employing different interpretive strategies, construct a broad spectrum of interpretations. It is concluded that the meanings identified by the authors of reception texts depend on a particular horizon of expectations and on the interpretive strategies applied. |
