Reception Theory and «The Balcony» by Felisberto Hernández
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.18485/beoiber.2024.8.1.13Abstract
The short story «The Balcony» (1945) by Uruguayan author Felisberto Hernández (1902‒1964) presents the story of a narrator who meets an elderly man during his stay in an anonymous city for a series of piano concerts during the summer. The elderly man invites the narrator to his house to play for his daughter who does not leave the house and so the narrator enters a private space and observes the inhabitants’ way of life. This fabric of everyday life creates a familiar environment in which the narrator gradually discovers the unusual which is what leads to a misalignment between the ordinary and the fantastic according to critics. An interpretation based on Wolfgang Iser’s (1926‒2007) literary theory is proposed as it is presented in The Act of Reading: A Theory of Aesthetic Response (1978). In this book Iser examines the relationship between a literary text and its readers who take on a more prominent role in the reading and meaning-making process. Focusing on the narrative techniques, the aim is to analyse closely the readers’ role in «The Balcony». Through the readers’ active engagement with the literary text, more profound interpretations can be examined which can also resonate with contemporary readers who can add to the discussion with their contributions. Therefore, it is concluded that reception theory provides a useful theoretical context that can enrich the analysis of diverse literary texts irrespective of the period in which they appeared.References
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