In Search for the Lost Connection: Hierarchical Tensions as a Unified Way of Deriving Meaning
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.23918/ijsses.v6i2p102Keywords:
Literary Theory, Open City, Post-Modernism, AuthenticityAbstract
The current study challenges the well-established close reading approach to teaching American literature. To establish the initial framework for analysis, a brief account of the role of the author in literary theory is given (Gadamer’s and Iser’s hermeneutics, Formalists, New Critics, and Post-Modernists). Thereafter, using the example of Teju Cole’s Open City, it is shown that the meaning of the work could be derived from building connections instead of assigning eclectic meaning to the eclectic fragments of the text. The offered approach both proves useful while teaching non-linear works of fiction and offers students an insight into authenticity of author’s work through its self-reflexivity.
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