From the Questions of Structural-Semiotic Interpretation

Abstract

According to Janusz Sławiński’s well-known phrase the author defines interpretation of the literary text as searching for a „hypothesis of a hidden whole”. The basic problem that is faced by interpretation understood in this way is grasping the real nature of the relation between the overt structure of any text and its reconstructed latent meaning. Władysław Panas looks for a solution to this fundamental aporia on the basis of structural-semiotic theories, according to which the literary work must be treated as a whole with a denotative character, that simultaneously has an iconic, indexical and symbolic meaning. The literary work is an anthropological fact, but its denotative nature deprives it of the presence of the sender of the recipient, and hence any interpretation is uncertain (hypothetical) of its nature.

Translated by Tadeusz Karłowicz