Abstract

It is often assumed that the correct meaning of a philosophical or literary work is the meaning the writer intended to convey. Some modern critics have reacted against that assumption by saying that there is no correct meaning of a work because the work's meaning is to each reader what that reader takes the meaning to be. In this dissertation, I argue for a via media: I try to show that both the writer and the reader have creative roles in determining the meaning of a text. ;In the first chapter, I examine the debate between Michael Foucault and Alexander Nehamas on what an author is. I argue against Foucault that the difference between the writer of a work and the 'author-character' in it does not imply that a reader should be indifferent to the writer. I argue against Nehamas that the connection between the writer and the author-character is not capable of disclosing to the reader a unique, correct meaning. ;In chapter two, I consider the debate between Roland Barthes and William Gass on the death of the author. I argue against Barthes that the reader does not wholly determine the meaning of the text, and against Gass that the writer does not wholly determine the meaning of the text. ;In chapter three, I analyze the creative act to show that it consists of at least five roles . I show that these five roles need not be filled by a single individual, and that the assignment of the creative roles influences the meaning of a text. For instance, if God has the role of arche, the meaning of the Bible is different than its meaning if humans have that role. ;In the fourth chapter, I show how variations from the "standard" creative act may occur. I classify these variations into three types of 'displacement' and two types of 'multiplication' , and show how each of the variations influences interpretation. ;In chapter five, I evaluate the notion of the "implied author" in the work of Wayne C. Booth and Jenefer M. Robinson. I argue against them that the implied author is not created exclusively by the writer, and that there is more than one implied author at work in a given text. ;In the final chapter, I identify three kinds of 'implied authors': the narrator, a character within the work, the singular proxy, the 'author' postulated by the reader to account for the features of the individual work in question, and the synoptic proxy, the 'author' postulated to account for the features of the corpus to which the work belongs. I classify several kinds of relationship which may hold between these 'implied authors' and show how the relationship that holds in a given work influences the interpretation of that work