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In this dissertation it is argued that literary theories have traditionally extended abundant attention on authors and texts, neglecting, with very few exceptions, the impor- tant role of the READER. To address this imbalance, par- ticular attention will be paid to the view of Wolfgang Iser, that a literary text can only elicit a response when it is read, and that it is virtually impossible to describe this response without also analysing the READING PROCESS. I share this view as it makes logical sense: a literary text remains meaningless, a mere 'paper and ink' production without the involvement of the reader. It is also the reader's own com- petence, his sense of aesthetic perception which enables him to make sense of the, in the literary text embedded message, hence the title: "The Nature of Aesthetic Perception in Literature. The Interaction between Text and Reader in the Process of Perceiving Literary Texts." / Afrikaans & Theory of Literature / M.A. (Theory of Literature)

This thesis describes how Eliot's concern for language and form finds roots in early twentieth century language philosophy. It also explores the way Eliot's early philosophical themes concerning language and meaning reemerge in his literary criticism and philosophical poetry during the 1920s and 1930s, and in his more explicitly philosophical Four Quartets. More significantly, this thesis historically elucidates Eliot's debt to the philosophies of Edmund Husserl and Bertrand Russell, reframing his philosophy within the two poles of the "Linguistic Turn". By closely examining Eliot's unpublished and only recently published essays and notes, the thesis unearths probable connections between Eliot's own philosophical interests and his later poetics, redefining his legacy as a prototypical modernist poet, and suggesting a new framework of study for scholars and students of literary modernism.

In this dissertation it is argued that literary theories have traditionally extended abundant attention on authors and texts, neglecting, with very few exceptions, the impor- tant role of the READER. To address this imbalance, par- ticular attention will be paid to the view of Wolfgang Iser, that a literary text can only elicit a response when it is read, and that it is virtually impossible to describe this response without also analysing the READING PROCESS. I share this view as it makes logical sense: a literary text remains meaningless, a mere 'paper and ink' production without the involvement of the reader. It is also the reader's own com- petence, his sense of aesthetic perception which enables him to make sense of the, in the literary text embedded message, hence the title: "The Nature of Aesthetic Perception in Literature. The Interaction between Text and Reader in the Process of Perceiving Literary Texts." / Afrikaans and Theory of Literature / M.A. (Theory of Literature)

A dissertation submitted to the Faculty of Arts, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Engiish. / This dissertation grapples With the activity of critical production. It answers not to an interpretation which would constitute the writer within the institutionalised category of effect and object of knowledge, but rather to an explosion, a proliferation of critical paths at the limit of the doxa: a veritable labyrinth. The terms of my title open up a methodological field within which I enact the play of associations, contiguities, relations among four texts: The Name of the Rose, lost. in the Funhouse, The Naked Lunch and 'The library of Babel'. The terms themselves disseminate across the text argument in citations, references, echoes. The labyrinth is used throughout as a trope which deconstructs its own performance within the text. Legends are myths, inscriptions on maps, legenda or "things for reading" (through an etymological supplement), "lesser libraries." Barthes cites the biblical words of the man possessed by demons: "My name is Legion for we are many" and demonstrates how the demonlacal plural brings with it fundamental changes in reading strategies. The notion of the demoniacal plural is used to problernatlse the debates around subjectivity. The belief in unitary, rational selfhood is debunked and the subject is Seen to be plural, irreducible, heterogenous. Subjectivity is further problernatlsed by demonstrating the slippage among the labyrinthine multiplicity of discursive positions occupied by readers: the monoloqlcal models of meaning developed from each reading position constantly shift. The discursive position recuperated and sanctioned by the Law or the institution is impossible to maintain as Subjects are seduced by language into confrontation with other positions through their continuous renarnings of each other. Subjectivity and discursive positioning form .their own labyrinthine intentionality. The argument then moves towards an exploration of the current calculation of the subject for the writer. (Distinctions between author and critic begin to collapse here since meaning is shown to be governed by neither). The reading\writing subject strolls in a vast labyrinth of text - a postmodern flaneur who frustrates the work of exegesis by enacting the play of the signifier. The line traced by this hypothetical traveller does not engender a definitive theoretical or discursive map of the domain but rather a contingent and highly provisional, backward turning path. The demoniacal plural is also used to problematise notions of an original and innovative critical voice which "speaks" the dissertation. The logic regulating the argument is the already-written, The dissertation plavs with each text (both critical texts and fictions) looking for a practice which reproduces them but in another place. My imagined (ideal?) reader wmtreat the argument as that Which. lt was not simply meant to be,will. follow.the argument and be seduced by it: an echoing. structure with dead ends, wrong turns, false entrances fictitious exits; misleading threads and deceptive lines, / AC 2018