The role of the reader : explorations in the semiotics of texts /
Umberto Eco.
- 1st Midland book ed.
- Bloomington, Ind. : Indiana University Press, 1984.
- viii, 273p. ; 24 cm.
- Advances in semiotics .
- Advances in semiotics A Midland book ; MB 318 .
Originally published: Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 1979.
Includes bibliographical references (p. 267-273) and index.
I Open: The poetics of the open work--the semantics of metaphor--on the possibility of generatingaesthetic messages in an edenic language. II. Closed: The myth of Superman--rhetoric and ideology in Sue\'s Les Mysteres de Paris--narrative structures in Fleming. III. Open/Closed: Peirce and the semiotic foundations of openness: signs as texts and texts as signs--Lector in Fabula: pragmatic strategy in a metanarative text.--Appendix.
In this collection of nine essays, Umberto Eco sets forth a dialectic between \'open\' and \'closed\' texts, between a work of art that actively involves the \'addressee\' in its production and one that holds the \'addressee\' at bay and seeks to evoke a limited and predetermined response. He investigates the contributions of contemporary semantics to the study of narrative, and connects the modalities of textual interpretation with the problem of possible worlds.