Polemika s ekovskou koncepcí abstraktních subjektů. Analýza (narativních) textů a teorie komunikace
A Polemic with the Eco Conception of Abstract Subjects: An Analysis of Narrative Texts and Communication Theory

Summary/Abstract: The chief motivation for introducing abstract subjects in literary studies is the analysis of the operation of the work of literature in the process of communication between author and reader. One observes two main problems with Eco’s theory of abstract subjects: the effectiveness of introducing a conceptual framework and its application to the analysis of the levels of communication in the narrative text. The treatment of the problem of the effectiveness of introducing abstract subjects assumes mainly a clarification of certain metatheoretical and possibly also theoretical premises. At the metatheoretical level one can distinguish between the ‘realistic’ and the ‘functionalistic’ approach. In the first, the chief task is to describe the nature and relations of the basic constituents of the process of communication, in which this description is influenced by the underlying ontology appearing in the terminology of the given theory. In the second, the chief task is to illustrate the structure of the process of communication and of the abstract positions that constitute the basic components of this structure. The problem of the analysis of communication in narratological texts in Eco’s works presumes the correlation of the terms of model author and model narrator, in other words, two different levels of communication implemented by means of the literary text, where the communication between author and reader lies on one side and the communication taking place within the fictional world of the narrative lies on the other. This article seeks mainly to achieve a critical assessment of the means by which Eco operates with the premise of the abstract subjects of model author and model reader. The article intends to offer reflections on possible approaches in a specific literary studies debate, and, on this basis, to define the space for more narrowly defined discussions with individual standpoints, and to limit the emergence of pseudo­discussions that arise from fuzzy (meta)theoretical framework.

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