摘要
Through such ideas as ＂the death of the author＂ and ＂the birth of the reader＂ （actually, ＂the birth of the critic＂）, 20th century Western literary theory and criticism broke down authors＇ monopoly over the meaning of works, and announced that as readers, they themselves constructed the literary work and its meaning. However, does the meaning of a literary work originate in the author, the text, or the reader？ To understand literary meaning, should one start with the personality and times of the author, or stick to textual connections and the intertextuality thus formed, or make one＇s interpretation on the basis of the era in which the receptor/reader lives？ As Professor Zhang Jiang, Vice President of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, has pointed out, both authorial intent and the inherent implications of the particular social and cultural context, which cannot be neglected in an ontological sense, tell us that texts and authorship are always unknowingly represented in language, style, textual structure and ＂unseen＂ planning. This acknowledges that the presence of the authorial intent is a basic prerequisite for correctly understanding texts and exploring the sources of meaning of literary works. There has been a variety of theories of the sources of literary meaning, but the problem lies not in choosing between concepts but rather in the question of how to pursue a work＇s meaning through clues that have hitherto been passed over, and how to allow the sources of its complex structures to be revealed as they are read and critiqued in the course of their diffusion.
