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Ambiguity

   Date: Tue, 26 Jul 94 16:43 EST
   From: George Aichele <0004705237@mcimail.com>

   Ambiguity has been of great interest to literary theorists for
   some time now -- phenomenologists (eg, Ingarden), narratologists
   (eg, Genette), and (post)structuralists (eg, Barthes) among
   others. However, they are all much more interested in exploring
   how textual ambiguity works than in "solving" or eliminating it.

   It may be trite but I think it's true: once a text is
   disambiguated, it's no longer interesting.

This supposes that a text can be disambiguated.  Many interesting
literary texts cultivate ambiguity and cannot be disambiguated---the
ambiguity is integral to the meaning of the text.

By the way I know lots of texts that are still interesting without
being ambiguous; ambiguity isn't the only way to generate interest
after all...

-30-
Bob Ingria
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