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Abstract
With the advent of post-structuralism in literary criticism has come an interest in reception theories of literature and the role of the receiver in the production of aesthetic meaning. No longer is the reader of a novel, the spectator of a film or theatrical performance considered a passive recipient of an author's work. The model of artistic communication proposed a decade ago by Wolfgang Iser, Jonathan Culler, and Stanley Fish defines meaning as the product of interaction between a text (i.e., a set of verbal/visual symbols) and a receiver intent on interpreting these symbols. Traditional elements of narrative such as plot and character are viewed not as autonomous structural properties of a text but as interpretive conventions shared by members of the reading community. Contemporary poetics seeks to explain the cognitive procedures whereby a perceiver processes textual information in order to reconstruct the fictional world of the story.
Until recently, research in the field of poetics has concentrated on the nature of narrated fiction such as the novel or short story with some corresponding studies in film theory, but little has been done to apply these concepts to the dramatic medium. The present study attempts to correct this oversight by proposing the outlines of a systematic theory of drama based on the insights of semiotics, narratology, and reader-response criticism. Chapter one defines the goals of contemporary poetics and suggests ways to reconcile structuralist and post-structuralist approaches. Chapter two surveys five positions within the current debate over hermeneutics and presents the philosophical assumptions of the communication model used in this study. Chapters three, four, and five examine the basic elements of all stories--plot, character, and fictional world--while chapter six discusses the methods by which this narrative information is uniquely shaped by the dramatic medium. Chapters seven and eight offer a synthesis of reading theories and a critique of the most radical forms of post-structuralism.
