THE READER IN THE WORKS OF JAUSS AND MANGUEL: DRAWING PARALLELS WITH THE READING OF SPIRITUAL AUTOBIOGRAPHY, BY SIMONE WEIL

Abstract

This article proposes discussions about the Reception Aesthetics and the fundamental performance of the reader as the main agent in the constitution of a narrative, based on the studies of Jauss (2002) and Manguel (2017), which comprise the books Literature and the reader: texts on the aesthetics of reception (tradução própria) and The reader as a metaphor: the traveller, the tower and the moth (traduação própria), respectively. At the same time, the discussions intertwine with the analysis of the letter genre, specifically the letter Spiritual Autobiography (1942) (tradução própria), written by Simone Weil, contained in her book God’s Wait (2019) (tradução própria). The letters make the reader the main figure of their texts and lead us to analyze how the genre contributes to discussions in the literature, for this reason, some aspects will be considered and listed in this study, such as the reader as a subject, the reception of letter, the aesthetic distance between the book and the reader, its diachronism and synchronism, its effects, etc. To support our debate, perspectives from authors such as Umberto Eco (2014), Gérard Langlade (2013), Stuart Hall (2006), among others, corroborate the core of our questions.