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[...] there is something in writing itself which finally evades all systems and logics. There is a continual flickering, spilling and defusing of meaning--what Derrida calls 'dissemination'--which cannot be easily contained with the categories of the text's structure, or within the categories of …

[...] Having characterized the underlying rule-systems of a literary text, all the structuralist could do was sit back and wonder what to do next. There was no question of relating the work to the realities of which it treated, or to the conditions which produced it, or to the actual readers who st…

[...] Structuralism, as the term suggests, is concerned with structures, and more particularly with examining the general laws by which they work [...] structuralism proper contains a distinctive doctrine which is not to be found in Frye: the belief that the individual units of any system have mean…

[...] The whole point of reading, for a critic like Iser, is that is brings us into deeper self-consciousness, catalyzes a more critical view of our own identities. It is as though what we have been 'reading', in working our way through a book is ourselves.

The most recent development of hermeneutics in Germany is known as 'reception aesthetics' or 'reception theory', and unlike Gadamer it does not concentrate exclusively on works of the past. Reception theory examines the reader's role in literature, and as such is a fairly novel development. Indeed …