![]() One argument for reading Calvino’s novel in this manner is still prevalent: embedded in a novelty form of fictional arrangement, the book is preoccupied with the metaphysical struggle for dominance between supposedly antagonistic forces: readers and writers literature and literary industry. If texts are said to have no inherent meaning, there follows the extreme conclusion that any text can mean anything, depending on the manner in which it is read. At that time, postmodern theory stressed the role of the reader and critics assumed that reading creates meaning from the text, independent from writerly intention. The following essay follows up on her insights and proposes that within the novel is buried a stringent critique of postmodern theories, especially deconstructionism, that dominated literary discourse in the nineteen-seventies. Focussing on how framing devices affect the reading of the novel as a whole, Salvatori poses pertinent questions about readers’ autonomy. In a close reading of If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller (1981), Mariolina Salvatori examines how Calvino’s meditation on writer's authority versus reader's autonomy – understood as a battle between production and consumption of text or, in common parlance, the experience and difficulties of writing a novel opposite reading one – influences our understanding of the text. Power of Literature versus Poverty of Language ![]() Textual Play: Reflections on Literature and Language Narrative Strategy: Desire and Frustration of Readers’ Expectations Praise for the ‘natural’ Reader/Criticism of Academic Reading ![]()
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