Textuality and Agency – Exemplary Analyses

Abstract

In order to test my argument, I will examine several examples from different media and different genres, applying a textual analysis following formal-aesthetic premises. This assumes that structural as well as aesthetic aspects pre-structure the processes of reception and appropriation, while not fully determining or controlling those processes. Following the conventions of reception aesthetics I will conduct formal/ aesthetic textual analyses that elaborate on the effectual potential of agency within the different media texts. Accordingly, it is assumed that specific textual characteristics – the media texts’ textuality – form patterns of appeal that entail the polysemic potential of the text. Polysemy is thus not random, but determined by the texts’ organizing structure, by its dramaturgy, by its cinematographic and visual staging, by character relations, by genre structures and genre signals, and by intertextual references. Concurrently, ‘the audience’ is considered an integral part of any text, since only via reception activities can the meaning of any text unfold, forming something new in the process: the “received text“ (Mikos 2001b: 62).